 Enid's Kristi Bingham tells her story to an audience DRS' Resource Fair held as part of DeafBlind Awareness Week.
Enid’s Kristi Bingham was honored for being the 2024 DeafBlind Awareness Week spokesperson during the Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Services’ DeafBlind Resource Fair held June 27 at Metro Tech’s Springlake Campus.
“I am so excited to have this opportunity to be the spokesperson of the year for DeafBlind Awareness,” Bingham told an audience at the fair. “I have not been hearing impaired or Deaf for very long – only for about nine years. It was a very hard adjustment, but as a lot of things, I accepted it and moved on.”
She uses a guide dog and assured others who are DeafBlind that working with such a service animal can be accomplished. Bingham travels with her black labrador dog guide Derek who was trained by Guiding Eyes for the Blind in New York.
Bingham was born in Enid in 1975 with cataracts that blinded her right eye and left some vision in her left eye. She developed childhood glaucoma by age 4 and totally lost her vision in both eyes by age 15.
Bingham started learning Braille at the Oklahoma School for the Blind at age 4, and later finished Braille training as the first student in a pilot program at Enid High School in 1991.
Then, Bingham lost 50 percent of her hearing in 2014 or 2015 in a work-related accident.
Her disabilities led her to spend 13 months at the Helen Keller National Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she received training. Since 1893, the center has provided services to individuals who are blind, DeafBlind, have low vision or have combined hearing and vision loss to make their own dreams come true.
”I look forward to being able to put the skills that I have learned and get a job,” she said. “My goal is to get a job. But also my goal is to help people see that just because we are DeafBlind that we are very capable and want to just be treated normal(ly). We just want a chance to get out and show what we can do.”
More photos are available from the event.
 DRS Executive Director Melinda Fruendt speaks at DRS' Resource Fair, which was held as part of DeafBlind Awareness Week.
Christopher Brannaman works in the Business Enterprise Program as the operations coordinator and is a 10-year veteran of DRS.
Brannaman grew up in the Tulsa area, graduating from Skiatook High School. He started his college career at Oklahoma Baptist University, pursuing a pre-med track.
“After a few years, I knew this wasn’t for me,” Brannaman wrote. “I went into the military and became a United States Marine. I went a lot of places and experienced many different cultures. Afterwards, I went into the trades becoming a boiler engineer, electrician and HVAC journeyman.”
Injuries from a car accident would send him in a new direction.
“The accident left me without physical abilities to do all those things I loved or so I thought,” he wrote. “God led me into the profession of assisting people with disabilities. While I was not a client of DRS during this period, I ran into Dr. John Sassin while in studies at Langston. That turned my path towards a career with DRS.”
Brannaman earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies and a master’s in vocational rehabilitation from Langston.
He took time to answer some DRS@Random questions.
What is your favorite hobby?
Tinkering with projects in the shop.
What book or movie left a lasting impression on you?
Book: The Bible
Movie: Many, I like to get lost in the script.
What’s your favorite way to spend a day off?
Driving (road trips, fishing or just outdoors in the woods
Where’s the next place on your travel bucket list and why?
Glacier Park in Washington, the majesty of nature creating such a place.
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Steak duh.
What's one thing that can instantly makes your day better?
The wife and close friends. (He and his wife have been married 34 years.)
What advice would you give a new co-worker?
Anticipate needs - yours and those of people around you.
What is the best advice you ever received?
Good or bad, this too shall pass. Enjoy the moment and learn to weather the harsh times - “thanks Grandma.”
Who or what inspires you in your career?
The old saying behind every great man, there is a great woman, I’m not saying I’m a great man, but I know I have a great woman with me. My wife inspires me to accomplish much and has my back.”
I hope everyone enjoyed the July Fourth holiday, whether you celebrated it raucously or sedately, or didn’t celebrate at all, preferring to simply enjoy a paid day off from work. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact there is another day worthy of being celebrated in July. On July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed and became federal law.
It’s somewhat rare for federal legislation to go into effect as soon as it is signed by the president. Usually when laws are signed, they have an effective date somewhat later, often at the beginning of the following year.
For the ADA, there was a public signing ceremony. Perhaps you’ve seen photographs of it – President George H.W. Bush, seated at a table on a platform in the White House Rose Garden, with the fountain and reflecting pool visible behind him.
Seated on either side of Bush as he officially signed the act into law were Evan Kemp, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Justin Dart, chair of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. Standing behind the president were Sandra Swift Parrino, chair of the National Council on Disability and Rev. Harold Wilke. All were avid supporters and promoters of disability rights and the ADA.
Evan Kemp had spinal muscular atrophy, a disease which causes mobility impairment. He walked with difficulty as a result. After an injury in 1971, he became a wheelchair user. He served as the executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas before being nominated and confirmed as chair of the EEOC.
Justin Dart’s father, Justin Sr., was a wealthy and influential businessman and his mother was Ruth Walgreen (yes, those Walgreens). Justin Dart became paralyzed after contracting polio in 1948, right before starting college. He was able to get degrees in history and education, but the university refused to give him a teaching certificate because of his disability. He found being what we now call a “child of privilege” was not sufficient to keep him from being discriminated against because of disability.
Harold Wilke was born with no arms. He wasn’t allowed to attend public school as a child because it was thought he would be a distraction to the other children. He persevered, eventually graduating from high school and college before attending seminary. After getting his theological degree, he encountered opposition to becoming ordained as a minister but was eventually ordained. He became influential in educating his denomination about how to respect and include people with disabilities in their midst.
It's customary at these signing ceremony for the president to use several pens to sign the bill, giving the pens out as mementos of the occasion. When President Bush gave Wilke his pen, the reverend grasped it with his left foot, since that’s how he held and used pens and pencils.
Sandra Swift Parrino had a son with quadriplegia. She and her husband, a physician, also found society was not welcoming to people with disabilities. She wrote to her senator in 1981, stating, “…I have explored everything presently known and available to ensure our son, a mentally alert young person, has the right to national education, health services and community services. It has been an incredible struggle.”
As we celebrate our nationhood this month, let’s not forget this other significant date in July. It is a day where we finally had legislation requiring us to remember people with disabilities have the same rights as everyone else. We still need to work, like those present at the signing of the ADA did, to make sure everyone knows this.
New brochure in stock
A new Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing brochure is now available for ordering from the DRS brochure order form.
The brochure can be reviewed at our website.
|
