Anonaunt's World

Also, DDBM Choir 

Choir 

Dad Preaching

This is me?? LOL, nah just someone named Sarita Harkness like me.
to see her pix click link above.

Sarita Harkness
She obtained her BFA, interior design major, from Syracuse University. She is a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) with thirty five years of experience in both commercial and residential design. Sarita says, "Whether it’s one room or a whole home, I am a versatile designer who is attentive to my client’s needs and taste: contemporary vs. traditional, casual vs. formal. I translate your dreams into rooms that are comfortable, attractive and affordable."

If I am not mistaken, Sekoe White is the 5th on the left.

Posted on Sat, Jan. 22, 2005


Dunbar grad grabs gold in Deaflympics
WHITE HELPS U.S. TOPPLE SEVEN TEAMS IN AUSTRALIA
By Mark MaloneyHERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
Cutting down the nets after a championship victory is a basketball tradition, one that Lexington's Sekoe White carried on last weekend after helping the United States beat seven teams at the Deaflympic Games in Melbourne, Australia.
Then he took his gold medal, scroll and piece of net. He found friend Cathy Brandt and said, in sign language, "Thank you. Give these to my dad."
"He told me he was going to get it," said Sekoe's father, Virgil White Jr. "I believe in him."
So does Brandt, who is classified as a highly skilled educator and is on loan from the Fayette County system to the state Department of Education.
Sekoe (pronounced see-koo) lost his hearing at age 2 because of multiple ear infections and meningitis.
Brandt met him 14 years ago, when she taught deaf education at Ashland Elementary in Lexington. They have been close ever since.
Sekoe, a graduate of Paul Dunbar and now a freshman at Gallaudet University in Washington, was asked via e-mail if the gesture to his father was emotional.
"Who I am is the most high emotions in that gesture to my dad," Sekoe responded. "Even (though) I am deaf, I just move on in my life! I treat my father like my father!"
In other words, Sekoe values who he is and how he represents his family more than a medal.
"I'm sure he 'signed' his answers to himself before he sat down and wrote them in English," Brandt said.
"If you 'sign this' in American Sign Language -- which is a conceptual language and not tied to our word-for-word English language -- it's a beautiful sentiment. It shows a connection between a father and a son. It's a picture of a bond that is mutually giving where the son is giving back to a father who has always been there to support him. Now the son is simply giving back the things he achieves to honor and thank the father. So, to Sekoe it's not a big emotional 'dramatic' event ... it's just the natural reaction of his heart. That is who Sekoe is. He is a giver."
Last year, Sekoe gave the S.T. Roach Achievement Award that he won to his mother, Barbara Lyles.
White played at Kentucky School for the Deaf from the eighth grade through his sophomore year before transferring to Dunbar. His five-year totals came to 2,233 points, 1,238 rebounds, 543 assists and 384 steals.
At the Deaflympics, a multi-sport Olympic-style event, he was one of five Gallaudet players who filled the 11-man American roster. (HBO Sports is considering a project that would feature White and some of his Gallaudet teammates. If approved, filming will begin next month, according to the school's sports information director, Jeremy Bunblasky.)
Team USA outscored foes by an average of 106.4-71.0.
White shot 51 percent from the field and scored 31 of his 47 points in the last three games.
"It was just unbelievable," Brandt said. "He just decided a long time ago that he wanted to do a lot of things with his life, and he has worked hard to not let anything stop him."
Not even the $4,500 cost for the trip, which Central Kentuckians helped him raise to make it to Australia.
"If not for these people, my family and God, I won't be able to have that gift as basketball player and The GOLD medal won't come home to Kentucky!," Sekoe wrote. "So you all mean a lot to my life, 'specially my beautiful state of KENTUCKY!"

Tiffany Hannah, an Ohio native and a Kentucky transplant, is featured in the story above. She fought the barriers to become a deaf LPN here in Kentucky -- there are not any other deaf LPN's here so far as I know. (BTW, LPN means Lisenced Practical Nurse.)

Congrats, Tiffany!

S-

Presidents' "deaf" side

True or False?
• Thomas Jefferson had a deaf slave family at Monticello; their expertise contributed to making the finest Virginian wine from its vineyard.
• Theodore Roosevelt had a deaf guide on his exploration of the West; they discovered an area what is now known as Yellowstone National Park.
• George W. Bush often jogged with I. King Jordan on the Gallaudet track.
• Abraham Lincoln learned fingerspelling from Edward Miner Gallaudet at the White House before attending Ford Theater that evening.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower often used deaf war department civilians to send secret codes in sign language to his field officers before D-Day to avoid interception by the Nazis.
• George Washington temporarily used a Yorktown deaf family’s home as his headquarters in October 1781, site of the last battle of the Revolutionary War.
• Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson once killed a deaf man in a duel over his girlfriend before the War of 1812 in New Orleans. • Ronald “The Great Communicator” Reagan once had a character role of Alexander Graham Bell in a film that was never released.
• John F. Kennedy often partied on Martha’s Vineyard in which a few local deaf residents were in attendance.
• In 1918, Woodrow Wilson became the only President ever to be a commencement speaker at Gallaudet College. He used the occasion to promote the League of the Nation.
• A deaf White House aide pushes Franklin D. Roosevelt, a victim of polio, in his wheelchair on his campaigns for re-elections.
• Richard M. Nixon was the first president to use a certified sign language interpreter. Unfortunately, it was used for his resignation speech shortly after Watergate.
These trivia are all deemed true!

A family member was dx with Schizophrenia when he was 22 years old but the family never knew until 2 years ago...about 25 years later. Schizophrenia really can put a person in odd situations. Click on the link above and you will see what it is. There is really no cure for it...it will take a lifetime on you and the family. There are some meds for it... but it will not REMOVE the disease.
Another link is http://www.narsad.org/

http://www.rmdeafschool.org/staff.html

Scroll down and you shall see Scott Mohan's pix. He was a former Kentuckian along with Abigail Strauss. They grew up attending Ky School for the Deaf, transferring to MSSD and graduating there in 1993.

Browsed the 'net and found this..It seems like a good source for deaf sports, happenings, etc.

http://www.signews.org/

KSD is playing against West PA and ...Ridor's home state, Virginia. Here's the story...

Thursday January 6, 2005
Kentucky Classic this weekend
By MIKE MARSEE Staff Writer
Few basketball games mean more at Kentucky School for the Deaf than those in the Kentucky Classic. That's why the Colonels are willing to work a little harder to make sure it's a success.
The KSD boys will play four games and the girls will play three games in two days this weekend in a schedule that was revised to account for a last-minute cancellation and accommodate the two schools that are still coming.
The Kentucky Classic, in its 15th year, is important to the KSD coaches and players both as a basketball tournament and a social event. Athletic director Paul Smiley said it is annually the biggest event on the home schedule and ranks second in significance only to the championships the Colonels play for in the Mason-Dixon Tournaments.
"It is our highlight, our most important event," Smiley said. "Other than the Mason-Dixon, it's the most important weekend for our kids and we try to show our visitors a first-class tournament."
One of the three visiting schools booked for the event, Georgia School for the Deaf, called Smiley on Monday to cancel after state education administrators wouldn't allow them to travel.
Smiley said he tried to find another team to take GSD's place, but none could come on such short notice.
"I called 14 schools for the deaf," he said. "You name the state, I called them."
Failing that, he rewrote the schedule to make sure the other two teams, Virginia and Western Pennsylvania schools for the deaf, got the three games they were promised.
Four games for KSD boys
KSD's boys will play four games, two each against both visiting teams. Coach Kevin Hamilton said it won't be easy, but he said it will help prepare the Colonels for the Mason-Dixon later this month.
"Sometimes we play five games in two days (at the Mason-Dixon), and this tournament will really help prepare us for that," Hamilton said. "It will help us with our stamina and endurance."
Girls coach Scott Johnson wasn't ready to put his team through that.
His team will play WPSD twice, but Danville's junior varsity team has stepped in to play one of the games against VSD.
KSD is just coming off a three-week holiday layoff, but both teams will tune up with JV games tonight against Berea.
"We've been working a lot on fundamentals, re-learning after the Christmas break, and we ran them a little more this week than we normally do because they were probably sitting around a lot at home," Johnson said.
There will be 10 games at Thomas Hall, and all-tournament teams will be named for the boys and girls basketball players and cheerleaders. But Smiley said what happens off the court often means just as much to the teen-agers.
Lot of interaction among the schools
There is plenty of time built into the schedule for interaction between the teams, and Hamilton said that means just as much to the players and cheerleaders as the games.
"It's really important," Hamilton said. "Usually when we go places they can't talk to anybody in their environment, but here everybody talks to everybody.
"They're excited to meet some people and make some new friends."
The KSD boys will be trying to improve on their 2-2 record and put themselves in position to make a run in the Mason-Dixon.
"As we get close to the Mason-Dixon Tournament, that's their goal, but my goal is to have them redirect and think about this week and what they need to do to get better," Hamilton said.
Smiley said he's very happy with the work of Hamilton, Johnson and cheerleading coach Lorinda Cagle - all of whom are in their first year with their squads.
"They're all doing a wonderful job with the kids," Smiley said.Copyright The Advocate-Messenger 2004