32: Monday Evening News Roundup

Three news articles of interest today. First, a reflective Father's Day blog about Deaf innovator and inventor Irwin Lee Brody.

He was among the first students with hearing loss ever accepted at Washington University and graduated from Rutgers. His taste for technology and innovation grew sharper. As a new father, he fastened a microphone over my crib to capture my crying in the middle of the night and signal my mother with a flashing light. He could take apart almost anything, whether a clock or a washing machine, and put it back together again, only better than before.

In 1969, my father founded a nonprofit organization, his dream to establish a network that for the first time would enable the deaf to communicate with one another and everyone else by phone. He bought, stored, adapted and distributed old teletypewriters, or TTYs, all from a closet with a foldout desk in our home in Fair Lawn.

Click here to read the entire piece. 

Secondly a young Deaf man in Connecticut has become a volunteer firefighter; although the state won't certify him to become a professional firefighter, he's formed tight bonds with others in the unit and intends to commit. From Firehouse.com:

"I can help at brush and tree fires, grass fires, hazmat, car crashes, do first aid. Sometimes on the house fire, maybe they need more people to work outside, and do safety set up, or do the hose outside. Hook up the hydrant. Change air packs," Ronan signed.

He said he knows of a few other deaf or hard-of-hearing firefighters in the state. A deaf firefighter has volunteered in Simsbury, and there are hard-of-hearing firefighters in Middletown and Wallingford that he knows of.

 Click here to read the entire piece.

Finally, from the Statesman, Texas School for the Deaf pays for plane tickets for–and gets sued when it wisely uses points earned from buying those tickets to pay for chaperones and save money for school expenses:

Leonard Schwartz, a lawyer for the school, said it did not violate airline policy because the policy says the reward points can be used by others.

He said the school paid for all the airline tickets for the daughter of the woman who sued the school. Using the bonus points saves the school $30,000 a year, which helps pay for a teacher, he said.

Schools aren't likely to help students again if they keep getting burned like this.