Alumni Profiles

Alum's Experience Inspires Board Service

Jonathan Jungwirth

Jonathan Jungwirth received early intervention services at Tucker-Maxon from ages 3 - 5. Today he works at OHSU’s Oregon Hearing Research Center and serves on Tucker-Maxon’s Board of Directors.Alumnus Jonathan Jungwirth returned to Tucker-Maxon in 2008 as a Board member. Below, he shares his journey from student to supporter. This profile is from the Spring 2009 issue of our newsletter, Now You're Talking. Download a PDF copy here.

I was born with normal hearing but after a near-fatal bout with meningitis at age three, I sustained a profound hearing loss in both ears. My parents immediately became aware of Tucker- Maxon, and, as soon as I recovered, had me fitted with hearing aids and enrolled in the early intervention program. My sudden illness and hearing loss was certainly overwhelming, but Tucker-Maxon helped us re-focus and work through these new challenges.

With guidance from the professionals at Tucker-Maxon, my parents engaged me in a constant state of dialogue. My mother spent much time on her hands and knees in order to interact with me at eye level and to increase my access to the visual cues of speech. She would patiently retrieve my hearing aids and re-fit them in my ears after I sent them flying across the room in frustration. Both she and my father were encouraged not to give up but to continue their efforts no matter how fruitless they seemed.

My mother remembers one day in particular where, after many months of receiving no indications that I was hearing anything, she called my name as I ran from the entry way of our house into the driveway and I stopped and turned around. She describes it as being a profound moment; I had heard her voice and recognized that the sound I was hearing was my name. She knew in that brief encounter that we were on the right track and felt a renewed sense of dedication.

Tucker-Maxon prepared me well, and I began mainstreaming with normal hearing children in kindergarten. Tucker-Maxon teachers continued to visit me for one-on-one sessions during my grade school years. They intervened when we dealt with inflexible teachers, spent time with me in continual speech development, and helped implement various strategies as I continued my education alongside my hearing peers.

After several years, we all determined that I had reached a point where I could move forward with no assistance. I subsequently attended Jesuit High School here in Portland and received an undergraduate degree from Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Tucker-Maxon’s involvement in my early years made it possible for me to successfully become a part of the hearing world.

This is the mission of our school: to help equip deaf and hard of hearing children so that they can move forward into the hearing world ready to advocate for themselves and interact within their communities. I recognize the core importance of my early years and how critical they were for my development. My family and I are tremendously grateful that Tucker-Maxon existed when we needed them the most. I am very pleased to serve on the Board and to be able to have a role in continuing this great mission. —Jonathan Jungwirth

 

Full Circle: an Alumna’s Lifelong Ties

Rebecca Archer

This profile is from the Spring 2007 issue of our newsletter, Now You're Talking. Download a PDF copy here.

What does Rebecca Archer remember from her preschool and kindergarten days at Tucker-Maxon in the early 1980s? Singing songs on the playground swings with her eyes closed, playing a troll in a school production of “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and Pat Stone calling her “Little Red Riding Hood” one day when she was dressed in red from head to toe.

Although Rebecca transitioned to All Saints Academy in first grade, those early years at Tucker-Maxon marked the start of not one, but two, significant relationships.

Today Rebecca is a teacher in Tucker-Maxon’s Mainstream program, continuing a connection to the school that began when she was diagnosed with hereditary hearing loss as an infant.

She’s also married to fellow alum Chris Archer. Rebecca and Chris’s kindergarten teacher, Pam Fortier, would not have guessed the two would end up together. “At that time they didn’t seem to get along very well.” The pair obviously had plenty of time to work out their early differences. Married seven years, Rebecca and Chris became the proud parents of daughter Elise Diane in 2005, and they are expecting a second child in September.

In between leaving Tucker-Maxon as a first grader and returning as a teacher in 2000, Rebecca has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments. She graduated from George Fox with a degree in elementary education, and later from Lewis & Clark with a master’s in deaf education and a 3.9 GPA. Rebecca served on the A.G. Bell Society Board during the 2003-04 school year.

Rebecca’s students inspired her to get a cochlear implant of her own at age twenty-five. “I cannot even begin to tell you how much the cochlear implant has changed my life!” she says. “Everything sounds so clear and distinctive.  I am able to talk on the phone and also listen to the radio—two things I couldn’t do before.” Rebecca’s implant has improved her appreciation of music, a vital enhancement for someone whose favorite movies are “The Sound of Music” and the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line.”

With the implant, Rebecca can hear sounds she didn’t know existed, like “the clicking of a pen or mouse; a single sheet of paper being dropped on the floor.” And, says Rebecca, “I hear at a further distance, which is a huge blessing, being able to listen for my daughter.”

Rebecca credits Tucker-Maxon with “instilling the confidence that I can do anything I put my mind, time, and effort into.  I was able to make—and keep—friends that could relate to the life of a person with a hearing loss. Tucker was like a second family to our family—someone that understood, supported, and believed in us.”
--Jessica Johnson and Laura Sanders