HATFIELD, MASS—Chad Supranowicz was a third grader in 2007, when his mother, Stacie Weldon, gave him a map of the country for Christmas. Rather than highlighting state capitals, it featured the 30 major league baseball stadiums in the United States. The gift came with pushpins in three colors, so Supranowicz could mark parks he and his mother had visited, parks they wanted to visit, and parks they wanted to go to next.

Weldon’s gift for her son, now a 20-year-old finance major at the University of New Hampshire, marked the start of a quest to see all of the stadiums. So far, they had been on three trips with Sports Travel and Tours, a sports travel agency from Hatfield, Massachusetts, which have taken them to 13 stadiums. In their own travels, they visited roughly a half dozen.

“I’ve heard Chad say to other people on these trips, ‘My mom and I are seeing the United States, and we get to visit all these great places,’” said Weldon, 49. “It’s more nerve wracking when we travel alone, but with Sports Travel and Tours, we get a feeling of community. We’re all there for the same reason—a love of baseball—and we always have a good time.”

For Weldon, baseball was something of a family tradition. Her father was a New York Yankees fan, as was his own father. “When my grandparents would take care of me, we’d listen to the Yankees on a little radio,” Weldon recalled. She grew up in the Berkshires where Yankees fans were few and far between, but where New York was just around the corner.

Supranowicz was a Boston Red Sox fan like his father. Weldon had enjoyed teaching him about the sport and its all-stars, like Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, Cal Ripken, and Bucky Dent, regardless of the team affiliation.

“I taught him the love of the game, and he also played from the time he was 4 until he graduated from high school,” Weldon said. “It was something I could share with a son, something I could have in common with him, like I had with my father and grandfather.”

Weldon and Supranowicz took their first trip with Sports Travel and Tours in 2008, the year after Chad received his map of the stadiums for Christmas. They started with a Chicago trip, and have since gone on an adventure that started in Toronto and wove its way back to the United States, visiting several ballparks at once. This spring, the Massachusetts residents went on the Southerner, visiting Marlins Park, Tropicana Field, and SunTrust Park in Miami, Tampa, and Atlanta, respectively.

As a junior in college, taking Sports Travel and Tours trips gave Supranowicz a chance to explore where he might like to settle after graduation. “He loved Toronto, for instance,” Weldon said, noting Supranowicz now looks at all their destinations with an eye toward what it would be like to live there. “We’re exploring.”

Meanwhile, Weldon and Supranowicz got to root for the Red Sox and Yankees, and chatted about the umpire calls and other details of the thrilling games they see along with their fellow travelers, making lifelong friends in the process.

“We met three older gentlemen who take trips together, one of whom lives in Chad’s college town,” Weldon said. “It’s like it was meant to be. We share photos and talk to the three of them and their wives by phone.”

In fact, when visiting Tampa, Weldon, and Supranowicz asked Sports Travel and Tours’ Project Sales Coordinator Anthony Incampo if the three men—who live only an hour away—could get tickets and watch the game with them. Anthony helped make that outing happen.

“We all went out to dinner together, too,” Weldon said. “It’s almost like they’ve adopted my son and we have this great new extended family.”

Learn more about Sports Travel and Tours.

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Cochlear Implant Awareness Day to be held February 25 to call attention to the technology and positive results

GAINSVILLE, FLORIDA—Chase Brannan doesn’t remember the moment his parents first questioned whether he could hear. He was too young, but he’s heard the story so many times, he knows their suspicions triggered concern and a series of physician visits.

Now a senior at the University of Florida, Brannan also well knows that, because of technology, paired with specialized listening and spoken language education, a diagnosis that one is profoundly deaf is no longer devastating.

Brannan, 24, has had a cochlear implant in his right ear for almost a quarter century and in both ears for 10 years. The technology has allowed him to access academic success, leadership and community activism. He assists his father with a cow-calf operation, and is a student senator, and an advocate for people with disabilities of all kinds.

Because cochlear implants transformed his life at a young age, Brannan is proud to call attention to Cochlear Implant Awareness Day, held annually since 2009 on Feb. 25, the date the first cochlear implant procedure was completed in Paris, France, in 1957.

Many manufacturers of the life-changing technology, as well as organizations in the field of deaf education, recognize the anniversary to raise public and government awareness about the benefits of the electronic devices.

“The main purpose of the implant is to receive sounds,” Brannan said. “Mine enabled me to talk. If you can speak, you can communicate with the majority of the population. My cochlear implants were a step for me in that direction.”

Cochlear implants, listening and spoken language

Cochlear implants are surgically implanted and provide a sense of sound to individuals who are profoundly deaf. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the external processor receives and transmits sounds in the environment and directly stimulates the cochlea, bypassing nonfunctioning areas in the inner ear.

Jan Gatty, Ed.D, the director of Child and Family Services for Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, was present at the hearings held by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration in 1984, when cochlear implant technology was approved for use in adults.

“It was groundbreaking,” she said, noting that by 2000, the technology was approved for use in children as young as 12 months old. Around the same time, hospital screenings for hearing loss in newborns allowed diagnosis of deafness in infancy.

Early diagnosis, combined with advanced hearing technology, radically improved outcomes. “The behavioral shift for deaf and hard of hearing children altered the course of education for students with hearing loss,” Gatty said.

She stresses early identification and cochlear implants are only two of the criteria that allow children who are profoundly deaf to listen and talk. The third is specialized instruction in listening and spoken language by experts and experienced professionals such as those at Clarke.

“The work of speech and language professionals then becomes helping children to learn the meaning of sound particularly as it relates to the development of that part of the brain that deals with spoken language,” she said.

In recent years, 60 percent of Clarke students have used cochlear implants, and outcomes for those with profound hearing loss are tremendously improved. Many students now enter neighborhood schools, in classrooms with their hearing peers in early childhood, as opposed to mainstreaming—as it’s called—in adolescence, Gatty said.

This shift to early mainstreaming was so dramatic that Clarke has transformed from a residential program established in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1867 to five campuses along the East coast: Northampton and Boston, Massachusetts; New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Jacksonville, Florida, where Brannan received his Clarke education.

“As children with cochlear implants are mainstreamed into classrooms with hearing peers, it is critical that there are teachers of the deaf who have experience and expertise in the patterns of spoken language acquisition in children who use implants,” Gatty said. “Children need to hear spoken language early in life, to learn to control movements of their speech mechanism.”

About cochlear implants

Cochlear implants are also useful for adults who lose hearing in later life.

Nearly 188,000 individuals worldwide are fitted with a cochlear implant. In the United States, more than 41,000 adults and nearly 26,000 children have an implant, according to the NIH.

The first cochlear implants were developed in the 1950s and were designed for use with adults who were returning from active combat duty, during which time their hearing was impaired.  

A profound diagnosis

Brannan was six months old when his mother, the late Kimberly Loughrie Brannan, was vacuuming behind him and noticed he did not seem to be aware of the sound.

Later that day, Brannan’s father, Chuck Brannan of Macclenny, Florida, stood behind him and hit a pot with a spoon. “He didn’t seem to have a reaction to it,” the older Brannan said.

The eventual diagnosis was that Brannan had profound hearing loss. At six months old, he received hearing aids; Chuck Brannan said that was the best recommendation at the time. In 1999, when Chase Brannan was five, he received a cochlear implant made by Advanced Bionics in his right ear, and, said his father, “Immediately, Chase took off.”

He received the implant, from the same manufacturer, in his left ear in 2008. “It was a huge improvement in terms of hearing where the sound is coming from and being able to rely on both sides for communication,” Chase said.

Chase Brannan was a student of Clarke when he received the first implant. The specialized education in listening and spoken language, which helped him to use the cochlear implant technology, was so important to the Brannans, they drove two hours a day to take Chase to and from school. Clarke now offers a preschool classroom in Orlando to further support children with hearing loss in Florida.

“If it wasn’t for Clarke, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Chase added.

Future goals

After he graduates from the university’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences this spring with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural education and communication, Brannan intends to get advanced degrees in the same areas so that he can teach at the college level.

At the university, Brannan was elected by his peers to serve as a College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Senator and is a member of both the Information and Communication Committee and the Budget and Appropriations Committee. He is also vice-chairman of the Disability Advocacy Ad Hoc Committee.

“I like being involved and busy,” he said. “I have so much energy and use it to be able to help people. I like to help people.”

About Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech

Clarke has been teaching children who are deaf or hard of hearing to listen and talk for 150 years, evolving to best meet the needs of children and families today through Infant-Toddler, virtual tVISIT (teleservice), Preschool, K-8, Mainstream and Summer Programs, as well as through hearing centers, comprehensive educational evaluations and research and professional development. Annually, more than 1,200 children and their families benefit from programs and services at five campuses: Boston, MA, Jacksonville, FL, New York City, Northampton, MA and Philadelphia, PA. Learn more at clarkeschools.org.

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