Determined to Succeed: Deaf Student Works Hard for Collegiate Triumph
By Angie Kinsey, The Paducah Sun, Ky.
Apr. 20–Tony Cain misses most of his compliments. Classmates talk glowingly about his determination, focus and drive to succeed right in front of him, but Cain can’t hear the accolades.
“He crushes everything he gets in,” fellow student Randall Barnes said with admiration.
When Cain, 33, realized Barnes was praising him, an embarrassed grin formed on his lips, and he seemed to brush the compliment away with a wave of his hand.
“I’ve always just looked at you as another student,” Barnes told Cain. “You’re no different. There have been a lot of people apprehensive about talking with him. They don’t understand the hearing-impaired.”
Cain, who was born deaf, understands the apprehension. He has struggled his whole life to communicate and soon he will graduate with honors with a degree in visual communications (multimedia) from West Kentucky Community & Technical College. Cain, who has limited speech, has been chosen to be one of two student speakers at the college’s graduation at 7 p.m. May 9 at Paducah Tilghman High School gymnasium.
A look at fright comes over Cain’s face when he thinks about his public speaking engagement.
“In front of 3,000 people,” he said, signing the number with his hands. “My wife wants me to talk. It makes me nervous.”
At home
Cain grew up in Amarillo, Texas, and he proudly wears University of Texas gear to class.
“You cut me, I bleed orange,” he said.
Cain’s parents, Richard and Laverne, and two older brothers can hear. They still live in Texas.
“It was hard for me,” he said. “It was hard for me when my family was talking. People left me out talking. I’d say, ‘What are you talking about?’”
Laverne Cain said her youngest son’s deafness was discovered when he was 8 month old, and he was fitted with hearing aids immediately.
“I hear vibrations,” he said. “I can’t understand the words. I hear the sounds, but not the words.”
Cain left home at 11 to attend the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis for four years.
“I think I can say it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done,” Laverne Cain said. “It was excruciating. We moved up there for the second and third years, and then we moved back to Amarillo the fourth year to start working on the school system. Tony was the first deaf student to mainstream with an interpreter in school.”
He returned to high school in Texas, where he played football and wrestled.
“I had a lot of friends,” he said. “I taught them to sign, too. Now I’ve got a deaf wife, and we can talk all the time. We’re teaching the kids to sign.”
Cain met his wife, Juliet, at Gallaudet University, a college for the deaf or hard-of-hearing in Washington, D.C. Juliet attended the Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville, but returned to her family in Paducah on weekends.
The couple left college and moved to Texas after Cain’s father was diagnosed with cancer. They have four children: Zachary, 8; Johnny, 7; Oscar, 3; and Amy, who is almost 2.
Juliet said her husband tried to go to college several times in Texas, but had to quit because of her high-risk pregnancies. They moved to Paducah five years ago, and he enrolled at WKCTC about three years ago.
“Mostly, he wants to do animation,” Juliet said. “I remember when I met him, he had a comic book he made himself.”
Juliet said the family has had to sacrifice for Tony to go to college.
“We’re on Social Security, and we only get money once a month,” she said. “Most of the times he waits until the kids go to bed, and then he stays up most of the night to get (homework) done. He loves being with his kids.”
In the classroom
Cain said he wasn’t nervous about going back to school.
“I knew they were going to help me,” he said.
An interpreter first signed Cain’s lectures, but the next semester he met Linda Seed of Paducah. Seed was a stenographer for 17 years before she went back to school.
“I came back to school to change the way I write,” she said. “One of my teachers told me about a student who was coming here who was deaf and asked if I would be interested in writing for him.”
In 2003, WKCTC received a $475,000 congressional award to establish a Broadcast Captioning and Communication Access Realtime Translation program. Seed gets paid to attend classes with Cain and uses Communication Access Realtime Translation technology, also known as CART, reporting to help Cain communicate in his classes. Seed types in exactly what the professor or classmates say by using the reporter’s stenotype machine linked to a notebook computer. Cain reads from the screen.
Seed, who can type 225 words a minute, said WKCTC has the only certified CART program in the state.
“The deaf can now go to Murray State or go to school anywhere in Kentucky as long as they have somebody like us,” she said. “Tony starves for education. He wants to learn. He took an algebra class, and it was very challenging for me, but not for him.”
Seed knows the rough road Cain has traveled. Her older brother, the late Charles Lanier, was born deaf and left home at age 6 to attend the Kentucky School for the Deaf.
“He had to go to college in Rochester, N.Y., to learn,” Seed said. “When he was of the age to go to school, there were two colleges in the United States that taught the deaf. If he was here, he would probably be taking classes right now. He didn’t have the opportunity when he was alive.”
In Cain’s human ecology class, Seed recently had to keep up as teacher Stephen Ballard quickly rattled off information as the class reviewed for a test. Cain had to balance between reading the laptop, his textbook and Ballard’s lips.
“It’s hard to keep up,” he said. “I just show up to class. I think about (how it affects) my kids.”
Ballard said Cain has been an ideal student.
“I have a couple of cousins who are deaf, but I have forgotten all my sign language,” he said. “I didn’t have a problem with it at all. He’s very intelligent.”
‘Who better?’
Cain, who has a 3.93 grade-point average, gets to speak at graduation because he was selected as a member of the All-Kentucky Community and Technical College System academic team. He will be honored May 19 in Lexington.
Beverly Quimby, WKCTC’s multimedia program director, nominated Cain and Seed for the honor.
“I nominated both (Cain and Seed) because it’s a team,” she said. “That didn’t work because it could only go to one person. Who better to have this award than Tony? I think people think he’s special, and he is special, but he is also just like everyone else. I think some people think the hearing-impaired are not as smart as other people, and that’s so not true. He has overcome a lot, and he’s put in a lot of hard work. He hasn’t gotten any special preference. He’s done everything the teacher has required.”
Quimby said more people with Seed’s skills and dedication are needed.
“There’s a huge need for what Linda does,” Quimby said. “There are not enough people who sign and not enough of what Linda does. There shouldn’t be a reason why somebody can’t do something, if we can provide it. It has been such a good experience with everyone concerned. More people need to be aware of what this is.”
Cain said he is willing to move anywhere he can find a job. He loves to draw, but would also be interested in working in theater or TV. He said people can learn a few lessons from his journey. One deals with perseverance, and the other respect.
“It’s never too late to go back to school,” he said. “If you’re 18 or 35 years old, it doesn’t matter. I hope I teach my kids to respect other people, even though they might be deaf or in a wheelchair or be blind.”
Cain’s parents will be at the graduation.
“We are extremely proud of him,” Laverne Cain said. “He’s had to overcome a lot of obstacles to stay in school. Deaf people have got a rough road, so anytime they can get an education, it will help. More doors need to be opened for deaf people.”
Angie Kinsey can be contacted at 575-8657.
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