University’s Gallagher Is at Peace With His Situation

Brad Gallagher knows what his mother is saying and he doesn’t like it one bit. She’s talking about how proud she is of him again, how happy it makes her to watch her hearing-impaired son swim and ski and scuba dive, doing things she once thought impossible.

“You’ve come a long way, sweetheart,” his mother says softly, signing as she speaks. “I can’t help but be proud.”

Brad rolls his eyes. He hates it when his mom gets like this, bringing up the past, telling people--strangers, even--how he has overcome all these obstacles. So he’s on the varsity swim team at University High. So he has wrestled and played water polo and basketball and soccer. So what? Being deaf doesn’t make you different from anyone else. Not unless you let it.

Jane Gallagher smiles. There is no use arguing. She knows her 17-year-old son wouldn’t be where he is today had he let his hearing loss affect him. But once in a while, it would be nice if he gave himself some credit. Perhaps only his parents can appreciate how far he has come.

Jane remembers it to the day--a Sunday morning in June, one week after Brad’s first birthday. Brad had fallen out of his crib. Jane and Ed Gallagher rushed their son to a nearby emergency ward. Brad started convulsing. Doctors performed a spinal tap. Brad went into a coma.

For three days, Jane and Ed waited and prayed. Doctors told them there were no guarantees. Brad had spinal meningitis. If he came out of the coma, there was a chance he might be blind, deaf or mentally retarded.

Brad awoke from the coma, but two weeks later was diagnosed as being deaf. His hearing loss was neither partial or temporary, doctors said. No corrective surgery or hearing aid would help.

“As a parent, all you focus on is, ‘He’s never going to hear music . . . he’s never going to hear birds . . . he’s never going to hear Christmas carols,’ ” Jane says. “Everything you hear, you realize he’ll never hear.”

Jane struggles when she tells the story. Reliving those moments will never be easy. As a parent, you envision only health and happiness for your child, she says. That is why she can’t help but smile when she looks at her son today.

Until a few years ago, Brad, who reads lips and can now sound out much of what he wants to say, was still too shy to order a meal at a restaurant. Now he goes out with his friends--both hearing and non-hearing--and orders burgers and fries with confidence. Damage to his inner ear once played havoc with his equilibrium, limiting him to remedial physical education until he was 9 or 10. Today he is one of the top freestyle swimmers at University. Last fall, his peers voted him best defensive player on the Trojan water polo team.

Gallagher, a senior, is not the only deaf water polo player at University; Glen Maeding and Mark Sullivan also compete. University has one of the top hearing-impaired educational programs in the state. Hearing-impaired athletes are welcomed on Trojan sports teams. That is why Gallagher drives with his mother to the Irvine campus from their home in Yorba Linda every weekday at 5:30 a.m. to make swim practice at 6.

He doesn’t consider that a sacrifice, just as he doesn’t consider his inability to hear a handicap. He’s lived in a world without sound for 17 years, he says. He isn’t so sure he’d change that if he could. He is happy. His life is full. He laughs an awful lot. He doesn’t miss music, doesn’t waste time wondering how it would be to hear waves crash. He can see waves, he can feel waves. He doesn’t mind that they are silent.

“Deafness is a mentality,” he says. “Some people have a little hearing loss and complain about it constantly. Others have total hearing loss and don’t even think about it. They just go out and have fun.”

Gallagher included. He loves to ski. He is beginning to surf. He earned his scuba certification a year ago. He has a special group of friends he met via computer modem with whom he debates philosophy and computer game strategy sometimes until 4 a.m. He says he would like to be an animal trainer when he gets older, or--to his parent’s chagrin--perhaps a forest firefighter who sky dives in through the trees to put out outrageous flames.

“But I don’t know,” Gallagher says. “I want to have a family some day. Maybe that wouldn’t offer the best job security.”

His focus at the moment though is not on firefighting, but fund-raising. Gallagher is one of 14 U.S. water polo players selected to compete in the World Championships for the Deaf at Sofia, Bulgaria, in August. The competition will feature teams from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Holland and beyond. Each U.S. player needs to raise $3,800 by April 1 to make the trip. Gallagher has raised $650 so far.

He says if he doesn’t raise enough for this trip, he’ll start saving for a similar one--the 1995 World Championships in Paris. Any chance to play on the international level, he says, would be great.

Hearing players might take that for granted--national team members receive publicity, have the bulk of their expenses paid through corporate support. Gallagher says he and his hearing-impaired teammates have written to the same corporations that sponsor the hearing players, but to no avail. Response has been quiet, at best.

That’s all right, Gallagher says. He’ll get over it.

Silence is something he can handle.

Barbie Ludovise’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Ludovise by writing her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, 92626 or by calling (714) 966-5847.