(By our own Wendi Washington!)
American Girl of 2020 – Joss
On New Year’s Day I dragged Nanci Linke-Ellis over to the launch event at American Girl. The 2020 doll of the year, Joss was being introduced. She is a surfer girl and a cheerleader who wears one hearing aid. Woo-hoo! The place was teeming with girls and their families buying these adorable but expensive dolls.
We’re looking forward to seeing you at our first meeting of 2020! Note that we will still be meeting at the Sherman Oaks Library.
Date: Saturday, January 25
Time: 9:30am, social; 10am-noon, meeting
Place: Sherman Oaks Branch Library, 14245 Moorpark St, Sherman Oaks
Notes: Feel free to bring a snack to share. It’s the Lunar New Year; perhaps some fortune cookies are in order.
Topic: The Latest information on Cochlear Implants / Hearing Aids / Hybrids and other Hearing Loss Related Issues
Presenter: Suzannah Hagan, AuD, CCC-A, F-AAA; Assistant Professor of Clinical Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery: Director of Cochlear Implant Program at USC Keck Medical Center. She has also been affiliated with Advanced Bionics.
Attendees will have an opportunity to share memories about Katherine Burns, chapter co-founder, past president, and dear friend, who lost her four-year battle with cancer on December 25.
We’ll miss you Kat but never forgotten!
It is with profound sadness that we inform you of the passing of our beloved Katherine “Kat” Burns. Katherine and her husband Danny Tubbs were among the seven founding members of the LA chapter of HLAA. Kat is the only person in our chapter’s history to have served as president for three consecutive years. Over the years, she also served as treasurer and secretary, and she spent several years on the steering committee. Kat was known for her beautiful smile and warm personality. When she was the Walk4Hearing Captain, she named our team The LA Stars, and we have been shining ever since.
We had another successful HLAA Holiday Party at the beautiful home of Heather & Frank Lehr just over a week ago. The crowd was a great mix of long-time members as well as a number of new guests who are interested in what HLAA has to offer. We enjoyed turkey and ham, as well as several delicious side dishes supplied by Urban Plates. Kudos to the staff at Urban Plate for comping our salads and bread! And thank you, Heather and Frank, for the spiked punch!
If you haven’t rsvp’d yet, please do so if you have interest to join our holiday party scheduled for
Saturday, December 14 at Heather’s home from roughly 6pm-9pm.
It’s always a great time filled with good food, company, and getting to know people who “get it” when it comes to the daily challenges and struggles with hearing loss. An invite was emailed to our members but if you haven’t received one, no worries! Just email us at info@hlaa-la.org and note the following:
Hope to see you there!
Essay by Alicia Fernandez
It is with great pleasure that I thank the current HLAA-LA Steering Committee for the wonderful 15-Year Anniversary Celebration on Nov. 2, 2019. It was both informative and joyful! As one of the founders of this group, I could not be prouder.
Note: View the full article to see some of the very first chapter newsletters!
What a celebration we had yesterday in honor of our chapter’s 15th anniversary!
Many thanks to Wendi Wash for pulling off a fun and interactive trivia game, complete with prizes, raffles and a festive and delicious cake. We are grateful to many of our founders who came from as far away as Riverside and Santa Barbara to celebrate with us, including Kat Burns, Danny Tibbs, Pat Widman and Alicia Fernandez.
The Census Bureau is looking to hire more people from your community and nearby to make sure we are counted in 2020. The bureau will hire regardless of disability and have many hearing loss friendly positions for you to earn some extra money!
Visit their website at https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html to learn more.
Did you know demands from all walks of individuals is growing for captioning. In fact, 80% of individuals use captioning that do not have hearing loss!
With people watching videos on the go using their phones, oftentimes audio isn’t possible so captioning saves the day. It’s safe to say captioning is going mainstream which is great for all of us hard of hearing folks! Check out further information from this article.
Come help us celebrate on Saturday November 2nd as we look back at the history and accomplishments of our chapter over the past decade and a half.
It takes a village to establish and maintain an active functioning group, and we have many people to thank, both those who started and those who have contributed to maintaining our chapter. A special shout out to pioneers Valerie and Willy Stern, Danny Tubbs, Katherine Burns, Alicia Fernandez, Mike Kaplan, and Grace Tiessen for brainstorming the creation of the chapter and securing a meeting location at the Hear Center in Pasadena.
