Thursday, May 28, 2009
Spreading the word: Roanoke Valley Speech and Hearing Center
For 50 years, the center has been changing lives.
JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times
Veronica Long, 8, gets fitted for a hearing aid by Michelle Ickes, an audiologist and interim director for the Roanoke Valley Speech and Hearing Center.
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For more than 50 years, thousands of people living around the Roanoke Valley have benefited from the Roanoke Valley Speech and Hearing Center.
Some might have received a much-needed hearing aid. Others might have learned to communicate better through speech therapy. Michelle Ickes, audiologist and interim director for the center, will remember the faces that have lit up when she's drastically changed their lives for the better.
The Roanoke Valley Speech and Hearing Center is a nonprofit organization that offers speech language pathology, hearing programs and industrial hearing conservation programs from its mobile unit. The center receives some of its funding from the Cosmopolitan Club and United Way.
But more than five decades ago, the center started a little smaller -- with one speech pathologist in the basement of a hospital.
In 1958, Bobbie Boyd Lubker, a speech pathologist, was approached by the Cosmopolitan Club to begin a speech therapy program for Roanoke Valley residents. It was October of that year that Gill Memorial Hospital opened its doors to accommodate the center.
The demand for the center grew quickly, and it wasn't long before Lubker was seeing 10 children during two afternoons each week. In January 1959, the Roanoke Valley Speech and Hearing Center became an official organization.
Over the next few years, as Lubker watched the staff at the center expand, it became apparent that there was a huge need for this type of care in the Roanoke Valley.
Lubker said she enjoyed gaining a connection to the community through local civic clubs and parent/teacher organizations.
In March 1970, Richard "Dick" Hawkins became the executive director for the speech and hearing center, which moved into its current location on Colonial Avenue in 1974.
At its peak, said Hawkins, who retired in 1997, the center had six speech and language pathologists, two audiologists and four administrative staff members.
There are currently four employees at the center, including the administrative staff, and they serve about 100 patients a month, Ickes said.
In the 1960s, public schools did not offer the speech programs they do now. That, combined with more speech programs in the area, means the number of clients at the center has decreased.
But Ickes said there is still a great need for hearing services in the area, and said some people have driven three hours to receive services from the center. Everyone is treated, regardless of whether they can afford to pay, she said.
"For each of us here, this is not just our job, it is our passion," she said.
