Matt White

I was born on Nov 29, 1982 as a hearing baby. A year after my birth, I caught spinal meningitis and ran a high fever which severely diminished my hearing. My parents consulted with specialists to help them in deciding which would be the best course of action for me – deaf school or mainstream. Ultimately, they chose to mainstream me so that I could speak well. I have to admit, it paid off and I am comfortable with my voice.



During elementary, middle and high school – my parents made me use an FM device. I never knew sign language, because my parents wanted me to learn how to talk, so they put a lot of emphasis on the usage of the FM device. I hated it entirely but eventually convinced everyone to discontinue the use of it during my sophomore year at high school.

Once I got into RIT, I finally started accepting my deafness and learned sign language. Sign language made it so much easier for me to communicate with my peers at RIT. I felt comfortable and felt like I actually “fit in”.


My biggest problem that I had growing up was the communication barrier between myself and others in the general public. People always assumed I could “hear” because I talked so well. I hated that and I also hid the fact that I was deaf to “fit in” as much as possible. It actually only made things worse on myself. Yes, I could “hear” but the understanding part is an entirely different story. I tried hard every day to understand what people were saying to me and finally caught on. Sign language was much easier for me and also led me to accept my “deafness” which then made it easier on myself when people try to talk to me. I would say “I’m deaf” and people were much nicer about it.

Lemarc Williamson

My schooling started at The Lexington Hearing and Speech Center (The Yellow School) in Lexington, Kentucky. After a few years, I then enrolled as a boarding student at St. Joseph’s Institute for the Deaf, an oral school in St. Louis, MO. At the age of 13, I moved back home to Lexington and mainstreamed at Sayre School for 7th grade through 12th as the school’s only deaf student. After graduating from Sayre, I went to Lenoir-Rhyne College (now, University) in Hickory, North Carolina for two years before transferring to Eastern Kentucky University and graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting.


Throughout my school years, I used hearing aids and AM/FM loops. In St. Louis, I was adapted to learning how to talk and communicate with fellow classmates and teachers in classroom, before mainstreaming to a hearing environment. I did not have an interpreter until my 1st year in college at Lenoir-Rhyne-College. Today as a Financial Auditor, I use different methods communication from speaking, emails, interpreters, note takers and other reasonable accommodations that is provided to me to enable me to do the job duties. Not everything is a easy process, but to be honest, I have the best of both worlds socially and career wise!

Lemarc Williamson, Financial Auditor,

Commonwealth of Kentucky, Auditor of Public Accounts

Introducing Josh

I was born deaf and my family consists of my hearing parents, my older hearing sister and my twin deaf brother.  We moved to Danville, Kentucky from Virginia Beach, Virginia when I was six years old.  My parents gave up their jobs for my education, believing that Boyle County is the best place where I could acquire the best education possible.  It was an overwhelming academic and social change for me.  I was, according my teachers, academically challenged.  In addition, my classmates made me feel socially inferior because of my inability to speak orally.  My deaf twin brother and I naturally developed our own sign languages since our parents received information from “well-established” oral-oriented institutions making handsome profits by manipulating hearing parents of a deaf child that to be able to speak orally would elevate our “status” and to prepare us to become “career-oriented” in the real world.  Thus to be able to speak orally means we are not primitive.  I was suddenly very much aware of what it meant to be a minority in a pre-dominantly hearing school and community.   That kind of attitude has become a norm and it has become a subconscious one in each one of us. 


Mrs White adds...Josh attended KSD and later Boyle County High School.