Signing Santa brings joy to deaf children

Dr. A.C. McCann learned American Sign Language 42 years ago when his wife, Wanda, woke up suddenly and inexplicably deaf.

Soon after he and his wife began studying sign language, a hard of hearing member of their church asked him to translate the services for him.

From there, McCann eventually felt led to minister to the deaf and now serves as pastor to the deaf community at Dayspring Community Church in Apopka.

“I preach to about 40 or 50 people every Sunday using Total Communication, a combination of sign, speech and visual aids, like Power Point,” said McCann.

For the third year in a row, he has taken on a special role around the holidays as a signing Santa, the only one most deaf children have ever seen.

McCann made his annual appearance at the Center for Independent Living in Winter Park on Dec. 12, to the delight of all the children present.

“The expression on the kids’ faces when I sign to them is priceless,” McCann said.

Keara O’Steen could hardly wait for her turn, bouncing up and down eagerly. When it was her turn on the jolly man’s lap, she opened up right away, signing her desire for a bow and arrow, and much to her parents’ surprise, a motorcycle.

Twisting her hands as if revving a bike she turned to the room with a big grin when Santa understood her wish.

“Really, a motorcycle is what you want?,” said Santa for the benefit of the hearing people in the room, including Keara’s parents.

“Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do,” Santa deftly replied.

Rick and Karen O’ Steen are second time around parents. Having raised three children, they made the decision to become foster parents, eventually adopting three of their foster children.

Their 6-year-old daughter Keara’s hearing impairment is caused by auditory neuropathy, a nerve condition that in her case began in infancy and causes her hearing to vary dramatically from almost normal to profoundly deaf.

When she was two years old, her parents made the difficult decision to have her undergo surgery to implant a cochlear device, which improves her ability to decipher speech sounds and communicate with hearing individuals.

To further improve her communication skills, Keara is also attending Lake Sybelia Elementary School’s program for deaf and hard of hearing students where she is learning American Sign Language.

“Basically Keara will be bi-lingual,” Karen said. “She is growing up learning English and American Sign Language to help her communicate across the deaf and hearing communities.”

“Hopefully this will improve her life,” Karen said, “by giving her the ability to choose between signing or speaking when appropriate.

Until Dec. 12, Keara had never seen a signing Santa.

The experience seemed to invigorate Keara, who couldn’t stop grinning and signing with her friends and classmates.

“Did you enjoy signing with Santa?” Rick asked her.

“Yeah!” she shouted before racing off to join her friends.

“Well there you have it,” Rick said.

“This is part of her normalcy, she belongs to a special community and events like this are wonderful for the kids and go a long way toward helping them feel normal in a hearing world,” Rick said.

“We brought our other two children along as well, because even though this is Keara’s world, they need to be exposed to it also. It’s important for us to experience things like this as a family.”