Heather Whitestone

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Heather Whitestone
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Heathers Story

• Heather Whitestone became the first Miss America
  with a disability on September 17th, 1994.

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• Heathers accomplishments are particularly
  astounding considering the fact that she has been
  profoundly deaf since she was eighteen months
  old. Heather was rushed to the hospital with a
  dangerously high fever, the cause of which was
  later diagnosed as the influenza virus.

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• Her doctors also suspect that she simultaneously
  contracted meningitis as she had a severe blood
  infection. According to the doctors, she was only
  hours from death when they administered two
  powerful antibiotics that reduced her fever and
  saved her life.

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• A few months later on Christmas Day, her mother
  accidentally dropped a pile of pans on the
  kitchen floor and Heather, who was playing
  nearby, did not even flinch.
• Heather was tested as "profoundly deaf" with no
  hearing in either ear. Her condition was
  concluded to be the result of her near fatal
  illness.

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• Ironically, Heathers deafness was a blessing.
  Throughout her childhood, Heather barely heard
  the voices of discouragement that hearing people
  often hear. She did not hear the doctor telling
  her family that she wouldnt develop past a third
  grade level.

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• Despite the odds, Heather and her family forged
  ahead. Determined to live a normal life, Heather
  was mainstreamed in a hearing public school and
  became the only deaf student in the whole school.

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• Unfortunately, Heather was unable to keep up with
  her class work and began to fall behind her
  peers. At eleven years old, Heather asked her
  family to send her to a special school that would
  enable her to catch up with other students in her
  class. While at the Central Institute for the
  Deaf in St. Louis, Missouri, Heather learned two
  grade levels per year. After three difficult but
  exciting years, Heather caught up with her peers
  and returned to Alabama to graduate from public
  high school with 3.6 GPA.

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• Heather enrolled in college and soon began to
  compete in local pageants. For some girls
  competing in pageants was strictly for fun, but
  Heather was on an entirely different mission. Due
  to financial hardship at home, Heather began
  competing in order to earn the valuable
  scholarship money that was available to the
  winners. She saw the pageants as a way to help to
  pay for school.

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• However, before long, Heather decided that she
  wanted to seriously compete for Miss Alabama.
  Twice, Heather made it to the Miss Alabama
  pageant only to come in second place both times.
  She was ready to quit. However, encouraged by her
  family and friends, Heather decided to give it
  one more shot. It had taken Heather six years to
  correctly pronounce her last name, so she knew
  winning Miss Alabama was possible.

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• Over the next year, Heather worked tirelessly to
  improve all aspects of her program. Her hard work
  and determination paid off. On her third attempt,
  Heather won the Miss Alabama pageant and a few
  short months later, she was in Atlantic City, New
  Jersey competing for the title of Miss America
  1995.

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• Stunning the audience and the world with a ballet
  routine performed to Christian vocalist by the
  name of Sandi Patti. Heather captured the hearts
  of all those who watched from around the world.

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• As the competition narrowed to two contestants,
  Heather calmly awaited the outcome. Often, people
  would ask Heather what it felt like to hear the
  Regis Philbin say, "and Miss America 1995 is...
  Heather Whitestone!" Heather laughs and says, "I
  never heard it."

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• In that one instant Heathers life was changed
  forever. Heather became the first woman with a
  disability crowned Miss America in the pageants
  75-year history.

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• Heather has always believed that the biggest
  handicap is negative thinking and that people
  handicap themselves by concentrating only on the
  negative instead of the positive.

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STARS

• S- success
• T-through
• A-action and
• R-realization of your
• dreams- S

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• STARS had five points and they were a positive
  attitude, a goal, a willingness to work hard, a
  realistic look at your problem and a support
  team. During her reign as Miss America, Heather
  traveled to every corner of the country

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• She traveled an average of 20,000 miles a month
  and spoke in a different city every other day.
  She lived with three suitcases and only went home
  three times that year.

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• The biggest news in Heathers life is that she
  was married to John A. McCallum on June 8, 1996
  and became a mother of two boys named John and
  James. Heather and John met during her year as
  Miss America.

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Heathers family
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FAQs

• What kind of schooling and therapy did you have
  that enabled you to learn to speak well?My
  mother was a schoolteacher so we did a lot of
  homework. She chose acoupedic approach, which
  meant I had to use what hearing I had and to rely
  on auditory stimulation. I visited a private
  speech therapist twice a week. It took me six
  years to say my last name correctly. I did not
  learn sign language until I was in 11th grade.

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• Did you have any role models when you were
  growing up? If so, who were they?
• While I was growing up, my mother was my big role
  model. She did not let adversity and doubters
  prevent her from pursuing her dreams for me.
  Helen Keller also became a role model of mine
  when I was in 4th grade. As most people know, she
  was born in my home state of Alabama and became
  deaf and blind at around 18 months of age. I felt
  like she was my sister and I began to take her
  words and accomplishments very seriously. She
  influenced me not to use my deafness as an excuse
  for not achieving my dreams.

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• What do you feel boosted your self-esteem most
  growing up as a deaf child?Through ballet I was
  fortunate to find a place to escape, a refuge
  from my feelings of being an outsider. The dance
  studio was the one place I felt accepted and
  "just like everybody else" was in the dance
  studio. Hoping to improve the rhythm of my
  speech, my mother had enrolled me in a ballet
  class when I was five years old. The ballet class
  boosted my self-esteem.

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• As I became a teenager, I began to participate in
  the sport of orienteering - a popular competition
  that involves being dropped off in unfamiliar
  woods with nothing but a map and a compass.
  Orienteering enabled me to increase my
  self-esteem, and I found that I also loved the
  thrill of competition. Competing on an equal
  footing with hearing people assured me that my
  mind and heart were no different from theirs, and
  when I won the state orienteering championship,
  my self-confidence increased by leaps and bounds.

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• Did you have friends who had normal hearing as
  well as friends who had hearing loss growing up?
• I had only hearing friends most of my childhood
  because I was the only deaf child in the public
  schools. However, by the time I became a
  teenager, I had several oral deaf friends. It was
  healthy for me to have both deaf and hearing
  friends.

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• In the past was lip-reading your primary source
  of communication when others were talking?
• Lip reading has been a primary source of
  communication for me, but I also listened with
  the help of my hearing aid. If I only read lips I
  would not get very much information. When I was a
  little girl, I was discouraged from relying upon
  lip reading. My mother, my teachers and my speech
  therapist would all cover their lips in order to
  challenge me to develop my residual hearing in my
  left ear.

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Heather decides to get a cochlear implant

• Did you wear two hearing aids prior to getting a
  cochlear implant?Prior to having cochlear
  implant surgery I wore only one hearing aid in my
  left ear. Unfortunately, I could not hear any
  sound from my right ear even with the help of
  hearing aid. For this reason, I used my right ear
  for the cochlear implant. My right ear had been
  sleeping for 28 years until the cochlear implant
  woke it up on September 19th, 2002. Now, I am
  pleased to tell you that I read lips less often
  with the help of cochlear implant and hearing aid
  together. I dont get too tired anymore after I
  have a long conversation.

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Heathers Cochlear implant

• Do they understand what the cochlear implant
  is?My oldest son is proud to say that he is Dr.
  McCallum because he loves putting my cochlear
  implant on my ear. He understands why I have it.
  He tells people that my ear is broken.

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• Do you have any advice for those who are
  considering a cochlear implant for themselves or
  their children?Most importantly, I suggest them
  to find a doctor they can trust, research the
  various types of devices that are available and
  speak to as many implant recipients as possible
  to learn from their experiences.

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• I was relatively content with my deafness and my
  hearing aide until my oldest son started to
  become more independent. He began to walk away
  from me instead of being in my arms and he also
  began talking more. He often asked me questions
  about the sounds he had heard and I could not
  answer his questions because I did not know what
  he was hearing. I also realized that I missed his
  crying from a distance. One time in particular,
  Little John fell down in the backyard and I saw
  my husband walking to him and comforting him. My
  husband had heard him crying and I had not. It
  bothered me in a great way because I wanted to be
  there for my boys.

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• What are you able to hear on the day of
  activation?
• The Nucleus device was activated on September
  19th, 2002. My husband John, my boys, my mother
  and mother in law were with me when I first heard
  my first sound - the clapping hand of my
  audiologist, Jennifer Yeagle. When I first heard
  the clapping, I heard it and thought it was a
  dream. Then she clapped again. It hit me that the
  sound was real, not a dream. I immediately began
  weeping.

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• I turned the water on and off, enjoying the sound
  and thinking of my role model Helen Keller, for
  whom the feel of running water triggered
  understanding and opened the window to a new
  world. She had been overjoyed by the experience,
  and I shared that same joy on the first day with
  my cochlear implant.

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• That night as I lay in bed, I heard Gods voice
  speak to my heart "Heather, I will bless you
  with a new gift of sound every day. You will hear
  your boys at the right time."

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• What is the best part about having your cochlear
  implant?
• The best part about the cochlear implant is that
  I am becoming more aware of what is going on in
  my house and around my boys. One time I caught my
  boys climbing into the bathtub because I heard
  the fast running water. I also am beginning to
  understand my boys speech more. I really dont
  care about other things like going to the movie.
  I just want to be part of my boys lives and want
  to hear what they hear. I also hope to do a
  better job on being there when my boys need me,
  especially when they cry. Four months after my
  activation, the cochlear implant brought me a
  great relief when I heard a cry realized that my
  oldest boy was crying in the backyard. I had
  heard him in the back yard even though the door
  was closed.

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• Did you find lip reading stressful?
• I find lip reading very stressful and
  frustrating because I am often confused. For
  example, if you look at persons lips saying dog
  and saw, they look the same. With my hearing aid
  alone, I do not hear "s" or "d" sounds. So
  usually I have to use my common sense. For
  example, if someone said, "The dog is running
  across the street." Then I knew it was not the
  saw who ran across the street it was the dog.

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• Most hearing people do not understand that people
  in my position have to think incredibly fast in
  order to keep up with conversations. One-on-one
  conversations are not that stressful, but group
  conversations when coupled with background noise
  are nearly impossible. Lip reading is a grueling
  and exhausting mental exercise and lip readers
  are constantly thinking and trying to discern
  what is actually being said.

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Books that Heather has written
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Books about Heather
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Favorite Quote

• Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear
  and the blind can see.

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You got milk ????
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Now really who looks better with the crown?!?! ?