I was introduced to Cued Speech at the age of 18 months in 1978. My parents had first learned of Cued Speech in an article and were very fascinated with it. At that time, I was a student in the Regional Day School for the Deaf program in Fort Worth, Texas. The teachers did not believe I was performing as well as other deaf peers in class and had little expectations of me. I was believed to be slower-paced than the other deaf classmates. My parents were not satisfied with the quality of education I was receiving. They did not feel that sign language was giving me the information I needed to perform well.

My family traveled to Kansas City to a Cued Speech workshop where they first learned to cue. This was where they first met Dr. Cornett. Fatefully, soon after this trip to Kansas City, a real estate agent mentioned to my parents that someone from Maryland had moved to Ft Worth recently and was in a search for a family to teach Cued Speech and hopefully work with. The real estate agent put my parents in touch with that person who later became my Cued Speech instructor, Susan Christopher (now Cofer). My parents took me out of the Deaf Ed program, despite many protests by the teachers and the principal. The principal told my parents that they were making a grave mistake by taking me out of Deaf Ed. My parents ended up fighting against the Deaf Ed program in court over this issue. My parents won the case.

At around the age of four, I was soon brought to Susan Christopher-Cofer, who was a graduate student working at TCU (Texas Christian University). I still remember that day vividly. I was so scared and upset that I did not know what to expect. Little did I know that was the day that everything would change forever. I soon began picking up Cued Speech in no time. My language dramatically improved. I soon passed up my former deaf classmates. This silenced the Deaf Education teachers and the principal who had protested against my parents. They never bothered my parents again.

I was placed in a regular school with a Cued Speech transliterator from preschool until college. I was very fortunate in grade school to have many hearing friends who cued fluently. The biggest drawback was that as I got older, there weren't as many Cued Speech transliterators available in Texas. I often had to rely on relatives such as my aunt, cousin, and even my own mother to be my CSTs in high school. I ended up choosing to go to Louisiana State University (LSU) because of the availability of Cued Speech transliterators in Baton Rouge area.

It was not always easy to be one of the rare Deaf Cuers in Texas because of the lack of support offered by the state's Deaf Education system as well as the lack of a Cued Speech community (such as strong CS communities in DC-VA-MD, Louisiana, and North Carolina). As a teenager, I was able to reconnect to the Cued Speech community by attending a cue camp in Utah and a CS group trip for high school cuers to Paris, France in 1994.

And then most recently, I attended the National Cued Speech Conference in Baltimore, Maryland (2006) where I reunited with Susan Cofer, the person who had introduced me and my family to Cued Speech in the late 1970s. The conference renewed my pride as a Deaf Cue Adult. It was such a blessing to socialize with many other Deaf Cue Adults. It filled this empty void in my heart. If it weren't for the National Cued Speech Association who made this trip possible, I would not have gotten my long-needed Cued Speech fix, which is impossible to find in Texas!

It is my long-term goal to re-establish Cued Speech in the Lone Star State with a couple other fellow Native Texas Cuers, Amy Rye and Jeff Majors. We strongly hope to revitalize Cued Speech and convince educators of the deaf and parents that Cued Speech is very crucial in bridging educational gaps of deaf children. Cued Speech has always provided a strong framework of language and phonetics which has enabled me to succeed as far as I could as any other hearing child. I want other deaf children to have the same measure of success or even more than I ever had with Cued Speech itself!

Where am I right now? I'm now working in Fort Worth, Texas for a mortgage financial lending company. I graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2000 with a B.A. in psychology. Upon college graduation, I spent some time in Florida teaching a family and their child Cued Speech. I soon returned to Texas and went into the work force full-time. After working a couple of long-term jobs over the next few years, I did not expect to end up working in the mortgage financial industry. However, working for this financial company has helped me grow so much professionally which I am very grateful for. I actually enjoy working in the corporate world, but I aspire to go back to school someday and pursue a higher degree such as counseling. Or do something I have always wanted to do, go into web design which is where my passion really lies. I have not decided which field to pursue a higher degree in yet since my job keeps me very busy these days. I will just go with the flow and see where life leads me. It is nice to know that I have so many options to choose from, which every deaf child should have once they reach adult age.

SPECIAL THANKS go to my parents and Susan Cofer for introducing Cued Speech into my life when I needed it the most!