July - September 2006

Greetings! The 2006 AADB conference was a smashing success! It took place at Towson University near Baltimore, Maryland on June 17 to 23, 2006.

Over 800 people attended the conference. Of them, 265 were deaf-blind delegates and the rest were SSPs (support service providers), family members and observers. They came from all over America and from other countries, including Canada, England and Japan. It was wonderful to meet and mingle with new and old friends.

The theme for this year's conference was "AADB on the Move: No Deaf-Blind Left Behind. The Rev. Cyril Axelrod was the keynote address during the Opening Ceremonies. He used some personal experiences from his book entitled "... And the Journey Begins" to explain why AADB needed to be on the move, and to encourage everyone not to give up on their hopes and dreams.

Also at our opening ceremony, Yvonne Dunkle from the Maryland Office for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing presented us with a proclamation from Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich. This proclamation declared that June 17 to 23, 2006 was Deaf-Blind Awareness Week in the state of Maryland.

A record number of deaf-blind delegates participated in business meetings, exhibits, forums, workshops and other activities. For example, a quorum was met at the AADB general business meeting. Many delegates discussed issues in depth and asked many questions. They wanted to continue discussions further even after the meeting had to stop because of time constraints.

Also, many delegates took part in each of four forums - SSP, Technology, Jobs/Independent Living, and Air Travel. Over 400 people attended the SSP and Air Travel Forums, and over 200 attended the Technology and Jobs/Independent Living forums. Their input, comments, experiences, views, ideas and feelings were documented and will be reviewed by appropriate people as well as the board of directors of AADB.

Delegates attended workshops and exhibits, and had a chance to learn about the newest information on cochlear implants, job seeking skills, emergency preparedness, technology, and more.  One workshop entitled "Deaf-Blind Parents Can!" was very good.

The tours and banquet were an excellent way to close the conference. Four awards and two special certificates were awarded during the banquet. One, the Laura Bridgman Award, went to Kathleen "Kathie' Anderson, who died the night before this year's conference started. It was emotional when Dorothy Walt received the award for Ms. Anderson.

Maria Perea received the John Murphy Award for effectively promoting the advocacy of deaf-blind persons. Sr. Bernadette Wynne received the Peter Salmon Award for outstanding service to the deaf-blind community. Helen Keller National Center received the Special Services Award for its outstanding support of AADB’s mission and goals. David Chee was presented with a Certificate of Outstanding Achievement.

Let us thank Dr. Sheryl Cooper and her local committee for working very hard to help make the conference a smashing success. They spent countless hours and countless days preparing for the conference. Now, they deserve to relax and celebrate.

I also want to thank Nancy Bloch, Executive Director of the National Association of the Deaf, for coming to our awards banquet and extending her well wishes to us. Also, my thanks go to Visual Language Interpreting, Inc. who provided all our computer-assisted real time captioning for our opening and closing ceremonies, and for the banquet.

As you may already know, the next AADB conference will be held in Tennessee in the summer of 2008. We don't know yet in which city it will occur, but we will make a final decision as soon as possible.

We will keep you tuned as AADB moves on to our next conference!