May 13
Listen for a lifetime

Forum deals with hearing loss, prevention

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter

WILKES-BARRE – Hearing loss is like shaking uncooked spaghetti with a marshmallow stuck to the end. No, really, this isn’t some cryptic Zen phrase to make you think abstractly (example: what’s the sound of one hand clapping?). Hearing loss is like marshmallows and spaghetti.

Audiologist Jim Zeigler may have had a room full of middle school students giggling as they shook the pasta and watched it break, marshmallows flinging across tables. But the message was serious. Listen to music for more than an hour turned up higher than 85 decibels (just above the volume mid-point on most iPods) and the tiny hairs in your ear that help you hear suffer irreparable damage, much like said spaghetti.

“If you have to pull the ear buds out to hear someone talk, it’s too loud,” Zeigler said. A consultant at the Luzerne Intermediate Unit hearing center, Zeigler was one of many professionals giving presentations during the LIU’s “Hear Now and Forever” conference at Genetti Hotel & Convention Center on Monday.

But the highlight of the conference, which attracted some 140 professionals, was Justin Osmond, son of the lead singer of the Osmond family and a staunch advocate for the hearing impaired. Justin was born with profound hearing loss.

Osmond gave the keynote speech following a luncheon and Mayor Tom Leighton proclaimed May as “Better Hearing and Speech Month.”

Osmond sported the trademark toothy grin of his famed family, but also had the tell-tale speech patterns of those who learned to talk in silence, particularly the struggle pronouncing the letter R. He peppered his presentation with inspirational observations like “reach for the stars, and at least you won’t get a handful of mud,” and “You can get bitter, or you can get better.”

Osmond said the family music business began in an effort to raise money for hearing aids for the two oldest brothers. He conceded he was bitter as a child, at one point flushing his hearing aids down the toilet.

But he adopted the slogan “I may have a hearing loss, but that hearing loss doesn’t have me,” and devoted himself to helping others. “Kindness is the language deaf people can hear and blind people can see.” Now he works with the Starkey Hearing Foundation, providing free hearing aids to children.

Osmond urged those present never to give up on the children they serve.

Zeigler certainly shouldn’t; his presentation had a real impact. Asked if she would heed his advice and turn down the volume, Meyers High School student Kingston Kurutz said “Definitely. I don’t want to be deaf by the age of 26!”

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