Northpinellas: 2 assist woman in crisis

SEMINOLE -- Joanne Kong is deaf. She is paralyzed from the waist down. She was raised in a Korean orphanage where she had to steal food and was beaten for it. As a young woman, she had to give up her only child for adoption. Years later, after immigrating to the U.S., her former husband tried to electrocute her.

Now, at 45, she finds herself alone in Seminole in a run-down converted motel with a bleak view of the back of a BP gas station.

When Kong moved to the Bayou Courtyard, a housing facility for the deaf, she had only a bed and a wheelchair. But thanks to Naomi Klensten of St. Petersburg and Erika Blair of East Lake, her life is better. This spring, Blair wrote a passionate letter to the Lansbrook subdivision newsletter, and that brought donations of furniture and clothes.

As she tells the story, there is silence for a few seconds in the living room while Klensten and Blair, Kong's two interpreter friends, look at her, searching her delicate face, trying to make sense of what she is saying, thinking and feeling -- or remembering.

Kong can sign in English, but communication remains a problem. She writes so few English words that once, when she fell while taking a shower, she had to drag herself naked to her fax machine and draw a picture of herself lying on the floor with one word scrawled on it: "Help."

She faxed it to Klensten, who rushed over.

But it wasn't always that way.

Kong was born Okbun Lee in 1955 in Korea, and her earliest memories are hazy. She does recall being tied to her mother's back in a bundle, bouncing along as her mother walked. She was a very sick 3-year-old.

She remembers the illness and the high fever that caused her deafness. But in her memory she cannot make out her mother's face, or see her father or any brothers or sisters she may have had.

Shortly after, presumably because Okbun was now considered undesirable, her mother left her at an orphanage and never came back.

When asked through Klensten how Kong feels about her parents, an expression close to disgust crosses Kong's face and she says, "I feel anger at my mother and father. I hate them. I wanted to be with them. But now that I'm older, I think maybe they were ashamed of me. Or maybe they got divorced."

She lived at the orphanage for 17 years.

"It was very bad, awful," she signed. "I was 4, 5, 6. . . . I can't remember. I was always hungry. It was almost like prison. They never had enough food, and it was bad food. . . . The children ate barley. I wanted to steal the food. (When we did) they would hit us with a stick. I was red on the legs from the stick. We couldn't walk normal. We were limping. We would hurt when we slept."

American soldiers who were still in the country after the Korean War ended in 1953 would bring the orphanage peanut butter and dry milk. Other people would donate clothes. But Kong said the orphans never saw any of it. She does, however, remember that the man who ran the orphanage, a man she calls "the boss," dressed very well.

At 19, she left the orphanage and found work in a barber shop shaving men's faces with a straight razor. Around that time she met a man and began a relationship that produced a son.

But the man proved to be "an adulterer," and they broke up, Kong said. She did not have the money to raise the child, so she put him up for adoption, and a couple from France took him to their country.

Kong is clearly uncomfortable talking about her son, who now is 26, and she would not, or could not, translate his Korean name into English when asked.

But when asked whether she would like to meet him, her eyes brightened and she nodded vigorously. Still, she knows it is probably impossible: The French couple changed his name.

Years later, when she was 25, Kong met Suh Hee Kong, a deaf man, and dated him for three years before accepting his proposal of marriage.

The next 15 years with him were a nightmare, she said. He "was depressed and crazy," and would "get angry and blow up" and beat her, she said through an interpreter.

The couple moved to the U.S. in 1984, changed their first names to Thomas and Joanne, and lived in Queens and New Jersey, where Suh Hee Kong had family.

During those years, she learned American sign language and became a U.S. citizen. All the while, she said, her husband beat her and once tried to choke her to death.

But that doesn't compare to what happened after the couple moved to South Carolina.

In June 1997, Kong was asleep in her bed at about 5 a.m. when her intoxicated husband sneaked up and placed some wires on her. Then he zapped her at least 30 times with electricity.

Dazed, but not realizing fully what had happened or the extent of her injuries, Kong escaped, seeking out friends who rushed her to the hospital.

"I should have died," she said. "The doctor said, "Your heart is strong. Normally, if you are (zapped) 15 times you die.' I'm lucky."

Thomas Kong could not be reached for comment last week. According to records from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Suh Hee Kong was arrested and charged with assault and battery with intent to kill. He was sentenced to 132 days in jail.

Joanne Kong left him. But her bad luck continued.

Six months after the attack, in December 1997, Kong was "feeling strange noises" as she drove her Ford down a road. Then the car went out of control, spinning and rolling. When it came to a stop right side up, she realized immediately she was paralyzed; her leg was straight up against the steering wheel but she could not feel it.

She stared at it, shocked.

While she was recuperating in South Carolina, she met an interpreter who was a Jehovah's Witness. When Kong told the woman that she wished to move to Florida, the woman called Klensten, a fellow Jehovah's Witness who was a friend of hers.

"Imagine being stuck in this country with no family, no husband and moving to Florida and being absolutely alone," Klensten said. "If that girl in South Carolina hadn't called, I wouldn't have met her."

Kong needs Klensten and Blair desperately. They are advocates for her and give her things she needs.

"She gets $512 in SSI (Supplemental Security Income). Her rent is $430. The alarm she must wear around her neck costs $35 a month. She gets $85 a month in food stamps," Klensten said.

"She's overdrawn," Blair chimed in.

They worry about Kong. They don't know whether she is going to make it. They are thinking only of her immediate needs: diapers, suppositories, laxatives and other items patients with Kong's medical problems require.

"But the biggest problem is getting catheters," Klensten added. Not the cheap kind, but a softer type that is less irritating. "The government won't pay for it."

She is trying to do without the Prozac prescribed her. When asked where she sees herself in five years, she said she imagines herself in an English class, and possibly taking a computer course.

But when she is asked to describe a single happy moment in her life, she sits in her wheelchair, looks down and shakes her head.

Then she signs: "There are none."

Maybe that moment is five years down the road.

Times research Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Eileen Schulte can be reached at (727) 445-4229 or schulte@sptimes.com.

Back to North Pinellas news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Mary Jo Melone

Howard Troxler

From the Times
North Pinellas desks