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The
RFB&D Family
Spotlight Stories from the 2006 Annual Report
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Barbara & Mike Barrett
When Mike Barrett began volunteering at RFB&D
nearly two decades ago, he discovered two new families:
his fellow volunteers and friends at RFB&D's Texas Unit
in Austin, and the woman who would eventually become his
wife. Certainly, Mike never imagined his life would change
so dramatically.
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"When I got out of college, I had more time than money,
and I was always being solicited for donations by organizations
for the blind," recalls Mike. "I thought, well, how
about if I just do something since I didn't have a lot of money.
I asked around and found out about RFB, as it was then known,
and then I still did nothing."
Finally, 10 years later, Mike was at a seminar where he was asked
to make a list of things he wanted to accomplish. "Along
with losing weight, I wrote volunteering for RFB&D,"
says Mike. "I did sign up for RFB&D - I didn't lose the
weight," he adds sheepishly.
The very first time he showed up for RFB&D's volunteer orientation,
he spotted another fellow volunteer, Barbara. "I noticed
her right away and I thought, 'oh my, I need to know more about
her.' But I was a little bit intimidated. She was tall, pretty
and very well dressed since she'd just come from work," he
recalls.
Says Barbara, "I noticed him too, and I remember thinking
he had a nice smile and wonderful eyes." Mike managed to
get himself teamed up with Barbara as director while Barbara read
inside the booth. "I made up interesting questions to ask
her about how certain things should be read," he says. A
few weeks later, they were out in the parking lot chatting, and
he asked her out for a dinner and a movie. "He showed up
with a bottle of champagne," Barbara says, "and we went
to see the movie Top Gun, which was in the theaters at the time.
He had this Pontiac with the most amazing dashboard that lit up
just like the cockpit of a fighter jet! I thought 'Wow, this guy's
nice and cute and smart and funny, AND he's a fighter pilot!'
And then I thought, 'This guy's a keeper.' We were engaged a month
or so later and married 10 months after that." They'll be
celebrating their 20th anniversary in spring 2007.
Barbara says she started volunteering to honor one of her grandmothers
who'd fallen ill with multiple strokes. "She'd encouraged
a love of reading and, since I couldn't help her, I thought I
could help others."
The Barretts are both accomplished specialty readers, though
both also check finished books for quality and "direct,"
meaning they sit outside the booth and run the digital recording
equipment for the reader sitting inside the recording booth. Barbara
started off reading computer science textbooks but will now read
general textbooks as well. Mike, a mechanical engineer, reads
physics, engineering and math textbooks. "When you're reading
a book, the simple part is reading the plain text," says
Barbara. "In specialty books, there are graphics, figures,
maps and charts, and the reader has to be qualified to describe
what the image is saying so that the listener can understand it."
Mike adds, "You need specialty readers because, for example,
in my case with the books I read, you have to know Greek symbols,
or how to explain what curves look like, or how machinery interacts."
When asked if volunteering for RFB&D has changed their lives,
the couple is quick to acknowledge the obvious role that RFB&D
played as matchmaker, but both wax philosophic about their roles
in changing the lives of others.
"It means a lot to me that my work changes other people's
lives," says Mike. Adds Barbara, "When you volunteer
or donate to RFB&D, you don't feel like you're giving your
time or money to an anonymous person. Even though we may never
know the names of the people we read for, we know that they're
real people doing something with what we've produced. Also, they're
often more willing to work hard to accomplish things - harder
than most of us will ever have to work in our entire lives."
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Christine, Mardee & Danielle Goff
As the prolific best-selling author of the Birdwatchers
Mystery Series novels, Christine Goff has the luxury of
creating the plotlines of her characters' lives. However,
her personal life has thrown her unexpected plot twists
she never could have dreamed up. Raising three children,
as well as three children from her husband's previous marriage,
Chris' life has been fairly hectic for the past 25 years.
Making matters more difficult is that two of her daughters
have dyslexia.
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Her eldest daughter, Mardee, was pronounced "slow and
lazy" by a second grade teacher, and was put into remedial
reading. Chris knew her bright daughter wasn't slow, and,
like a good detective in one of her novels, she searched
for clues that would reveal the real culprit.
"At first, I bought into the laziness because I thought
she should have gotten it and she just wasn't trying hard
enough," says Chris. "Still, I requested that
Mardee be tested. The teacher refused, so I had her privately
tested, and it definitely revealed Mardee was dyslexic."
When the Colorado resident went back to her daughter's
teacher armed with evidence of a learning disability, the
teacher wouldn't acknowledge the report.
"She took that report and threw it into her lower
desk drawer, and said 'dyslexia is a buzz word of the 90s,'"
says Chris. "I was so angry. I moved Mardee to another
school where she could get the help and accommodations she
needed."
Mardee was introduced to RFB&D a year later - her first
borrowed audiobook was Little Women. "For the first
time ever, she was able to discuss a book that her friends
were reading from an intellectual, cognitive level, whereas
before she felt very left out," explains Chris. "She
has since listened to audiobooks, reading for pleasure and
for schoolwork. And she has excelled, primarily because
that tool has been available."
Mardee, who still uses RFB&D's audiobooks for her studies
and maintains a 3.98 GPA, is now a junior studying abroad
in Florence, Italy through the University of Colorado.
"With my second daughter, Danielle, we didn't have
the same kind of issues because we knew immediately what
to look for, and we recognized she was dyslexic," says
Chris.
Neither Mardee nor Danielle has ever read Chris' print
books. "It breaks my heart because I know they will
never read like I can," says Chris. "It's just
too difficult." But now Chris is lending her own voice
to record her books at RFB&D's Rocky Mountain Unit,
and her series will be added to RFB&D's CV Starr Learning
Through Listening Library.
Finally, her daughters will be able to read their mother's
magnum opus. But unlike some murder mysteries, this story
has a happy ending.
Christine Goff's Birdwatchers Mystery Series
o A Rant of Ravens
o Death of a Songbird
o A Nest in the Ashes
o Death Takes a Gander
o Death Shoots a Birdie
(due out March 2007)
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Charles A. Frueauff Foundation, Inc.
A loyal donor for more than half a century, the Charles
A. Frueauff Foundation, based in Little Rock, AK, is one
of RFB&D's family-centered benefactors. The Foundation
was founded in 1950 by the last will and testament of Charles
A. Frueauff, a successful New York-based attorney who gave
his time and resources to many New York charitable organizations
- Recording for the Blind, as we were known then, being
one of them.
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The Foundation office is currently run by three members
of the Frueauff family: Sue Frueauff, who serves as a Trustee
and the Foundation's Chief Administrative Officer; her son,
David A. Frueauff, who is the great-grandnephew of the Foundation's
founder and its fifth President; and Sue's daughter, Anna
Kay Frueauff-Williams, who is a Foundation Trustee as well
as its Vice President of Communications & Programs.
The Foundation's mission is to improve the lives of those
in need by awarding grants to nonprofit organizations in
the areas of higher education, social services, and health
and hospitals.
"Charles was a personal supporter of RFB&D when
he was an attorney in New York," says Sue, "and
in the early days of the Foundation, those first trustees
tried to maintain the list of organizations with which Charles
had been personally involved." Fortunately for RFB&D,
the relationship has lasted for 51 years and through several
generations of the Frueauff family tree.
Before Sue retired and came to work full time for the Foundation,
she was an elementary school teacher and principal from
the 1960s through the 1990s. Early in her career, dyslexia
did not have the same kind of attention and awareness that
it has today.
"As an educator, I saw firsthand how students struggled
with reading," she says, "and how the support
just wasn't there in most classrooms. It reinforced for
me how educating parents is a vital part of the process."
Sue's grandson, now in fourth grade, was diagnosed with
a learning disability and has already begun successfully
reading with the help of RFB&D's audiobooks.
"We've come a long way since the '60s," says Sue.
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Susan & Wes Cogdill
Susan Cogdill and her son, Wes, have taken the concept
of the "RFB&D family" to heart. Not only is
Wes an RFB&D member, but Susan now works for RFB&D
as a direct result of her son's disability and subsequent
relationship with RFB&D.
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Wes, now 20, was diagnosed with dyslexia in the first grade,
but it was not until high school that his mother discovered
RFB&D and Wes began learning through listening with
our audio textbooks. Little did Susan suspect at the time
that Wes would be the first in a long line of students she
would be introducing to the RFB&D family.
Hunting for a job, she noticed an ad posted at RFB&D's
Regional Unit of the Virginias and Carolinas for a State
Educational Outreach Director in North Carolina. She eagerly
applied for the position, her first thought being, "this
job was absolutely meant for me! Having RFB&D in the
early years could have made such a difference for Wes, and
I wanted others to find out about it," she recalls.
"One of the reasons I believe so strongly in RFB&D
is that having RFB&D at the middle school and high school
levels can make such an impact as the students move ahead
in their educations."
Wes was thrilled that his mom got hired "working for
an organization that helped me," but quickly assures
his fellow RFB&D members that he doesn't get any preferential
treatment when it comes to getting the latest digital playback
equipment or textbooks on CD.
"Wes doesn't get any special perks," Susan jokes,
"but once in a while he'll get a CD cleaner!"
Like his mom, Wes is also giving back to the community.
He is a spokesperson for the Noel Program for the Disabled
at Gardner-Webb University (GWU), where he attends school.
The program provides qualified interpreters, counselors,
note takers and specialized equipment to enable students
to attend fully integrated classes and extracurricular activities
on campus. Wes also speaks at freshman orientation, serves
as a mentor to students and talks to players being recruited
for the GWU baseball team who have learning disabilities.
Even though he has become more independent by using RFB&D
audiobooks in college, Wes' family is never far behind him
to offer support and in Susan's words, "prepare him
well."
"If it weren't for my mom and dad, I wouldn't be in
college," says Wes. "My parents always pushed
me to do my best."
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Jessica Smith
Jessica Smith, one of last year's RFB&D Mary P. Oenslager
Scholastic Achievement Award recipients, recalls how beginning
to lose her sight "at the tender age of 14" and
then having her mobility limited by multiple sclerosis (MS),
once posed serious challenges to her dreams of academic
and professional success.
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"The initial impact of this unexpected vision loss
was detrimental to my academic performance because I could
no longer see the print in my textbooks," says Jessica.
But what neither she nor her mother counted on was "the
devastating emotional and financial effect a chronic illness
can have on a single-parent household" as together
they spent the next four years researching MS.
After becoming legally blind, Jessica was introduced to
RFB&D by her high school's vocational rehabilitation
service and discovered that "accessing my textbooks
in an alternative format enabled me to perform on an equal
basis with other students." In college, aided by RFB&D,
she took on three challenging majors - finance, business
economics and accounting - and was ranked in the top of
her class. While attending Francis Marion University in
South Carolina, Jessica maintained a 3.95 GPA.
In addition to graduating in the top seven percent of her
class with a bachelor's degree in business administration,
Jessica interned at the Department of Defense and now works
for the federal government's Defense Finance and Accounting
Services (DFAS). She is currently a part-time graduate student
at George Washington University pursuing a master's of accountancy
degree and intends to use her math talents to become a certified
public accountant and further aspires to become the Chief
Financial Officer of a major corporation. She makes a point
of mentioning that she gives back to the National Multiple
Sclerosis Society by making annual donations and helps the
organization raise money for research.
Of her mother, Jessica speaks with admiration and pride.
"She made a lot of sacrifices to make sure I could
live a normal life and reach the goals I set for myself,
even quitting her job at one point to care for me when we
couldn't afford a nurse," says Jessica. "She was
always there encouraging me; she made sure I was able to
continue my education. My mom played a significant role
in everything."
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