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Center provides gift of hearing

By ERNEST HOOPER
Published October 20, 2006

The drive from Gainesville to Tampa is two hours, but on one particular day last year, it seemed to take Tom and Laura Hill a lot longer.

The couple departed the University of Florida's Shands Hospital with shocking news: Tests had revealed their 1-year-old son, Blake, was deaf in both ears.

On the drive home, Tom and Laura didn't utter a word. They couldn't even say the word "deaf."

They knew something was wrong, but they never imagined he was deaf. At 5 months, he was unresponsive to sounds and didn't react when his older sister, Olivia, called his name.

The Hills, however, thought he had fluid in his ears and needed tubes. After all, Blake already had suffered a number of ear infections.

Now they only could wonder: Would he be able to do all the things they envisioned? Would he maintain the flashes of athleticism that led Laura, a south New Jersey native, to compare him to Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb?

The shock turned to tears when they got home.

The sadness didn't last long.

"People have told us it's almost like a mourning period because you find out that one of his major senses is completely not there," Laura Hill said recently. "But we decided, 'Why are we going to sit here and feel sorry for ourselves when we have such a great child?' "

The Hills decided to give Blake the best life possible, and Laura began scouring the Internet for information. Her search led her to Tampa's Bolesta Center, which strives to help hard-of-hearing and deaf children learn to listen and speak. It is the state's only nonprofit auditory-verbal center.

Working with both hearing aid users and cochlear implant users, the Bolesta Center helps many children mainstream into conventional classrooms by the time they start kindergarten. It also offers a number of support services for the parents and family members of the deaf.

Unlike hearing aids, cochlear implants are small electronic devices that help provide a sense of sound to a person with a hearing loss.

Thomas Balkany, a renowned ear surgeon at the University of Miami, eventually installed the implants in both of Blake's ears, and with the help of the Bolesta Center, Blake is quickly learning to identify words and phrases.

Laura Hill's tears are now tears of joy.

"His journey from deafness to the world of hearing is magical," Laura wrote in a moving piece she composed for the Bolesta Center. "He is realizing now that he has no reason to fear because down the end of every dark tunnel is a light of hope.

"The Bolesta Center has been a light down this at times dark tunnel. I thank God every day that my son has the opportunity to be part of the Bolesta Center."

On Saturday, the Bolesta Center will hold a Festival and Family Meeting for deaf and hard-of-hearing children and their families at 7205 N Habana Ave. The event begins at 2 p.m. with a costume contest. Tampa psychologist Jeffrey Merin will lead a discussion.

Thanks to the center, many of the kids will hear the fun as well as see it.

That's all I'm saying.

Ernest Hooper can be reached at (813) 226-3406 or hooper@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 20, 2006, 01:50:12]