Talent Loud, Clear : Irvine’s Sue Cleland Earns Congressional Service Award

Sue Cleland hates to talk about herself.

Yes, she’ll talk about her volunteer activities, such as her work with the Boy Scout Explorer program in Orange County. Or how she represented the United States at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul as a goodwill ambassador. And she’ll talk about the gold Congressional Award, the accomplishment she added to her list Tuesday.

But ask Cleland, 22, about the obstacles she has had to overcome to help others, and she adroitly changes the subject. It is left to Cleland’s fans to point out that her accomplishments are all the more extraordinary because she is deaf.

Cleland began gradually losing her hearing in the 8th grade as a result of lupus, a disease of unknown origin in which the body’s immune system attacks healthy tissues.

“I kind of like to think that it hasn’t really changed the way I do things,” said Cleland, who lost her remaining hearing soon after graduating from Irvine High School four years ago.

She compiled 800 hours of community service during the last two years to win the Congressional Award, which honors extraordinary community service by Americans aged 14 to 23. She was one of 53 people who received the medal and citation in Tuesday’s Washington ceremony.

But Cleland said she applied for the award not to prove that a deaf person could win, but just to set a goal and reach it. In fact, the judges did not learn that she is deaf until after the award was announced.

“I do wish that people would see this (award) not just for me” but for the accomplishments themselves that prompted the honor, she said in a telephone interview conducted with assistance from her roommate.

And there are many accomplishments to see. Cleland’s life story features a list of victories against tough odds.

Asthma prevented success in running events, so she took up shot-putting. When she did not make the cut in her first audition to join a choral group in high school, she took up piano so she could participate.

Richard Messenger, Cleland’s choral music instructor at Irvine High School and a personal friend, said she never

dwells on her health. Cleland always seems to have a friend with more difficulties, he said.

“It just seems to me,” he said, “that any kind of problem that anyone has ever presented to me pales in comparison, and the remarkable thing is that Sue really doesn’t think any of this is a problem. . . . She’s just determined there’s nothing she can’t do.”

Cleland wanted to be a firefighter and joined Orange County’s Explorer Scout program, which gives teen-agers a taste of several professions.

Michael McCann, a battalion chief in the Orange County Fire Department who worked with Cleland for four years, said: “Her goal above all else was to be a firefighter-paramedic. . . . (But) by today’s standards, it would be impossible for a hearing-impaired person to become a firefighter.”

Even after she knew she could never hold that job, she continued her work in starting and running other Explorer programs.

“She’s very goal-oriented,” McCann said. “She has the tenacity to see them all out.”

Upon losing her hearing, she promptly took instruction in lip-reading and diction to maintain clear speech. Then she enrolled at the University of North Carolina, where she taught sign language to students and people in the community.

She fought the university and her advisers so that she could continue to study Spanish, as she did at Irvine High. She wound up with an A-minus in the class.

“She has just always been proving to herself that she can do things,” said her mother, Ann Cleland. “I don’t care how strong she is. It’s still tough.”

But Cleland has made people believe that she’s not disadvantaged in any way. “She’s got me convinced,” Messenger said. “She doesn’t have any limitations.”