HANDS ACROSS AMERICA: 2007 MADC Conference

The Minnesota Association of Deaf Citizens (MADC) conference was held June 29-30, in Minneapolis.With over 130 people in attendance, a great time was had by all. Click here for more details!

The keynote speaker was the delightful SooHyun Tak, who spoke about diversity and biases. She was extremely popular with participants, who are already planning to bring her back to Minnesota. Other workshop speakers included Hector Brual of CSDVRS, Max Duckler of CaptionMax, Dave Frank of Kramer Financial Services, Kim Wassenaar, Sonny Wasilowski, Sean Virnig (who asked to give up his workshop slot in order to have everyone attend SooHyun's workshop), Alicia Lane, Raymond Luczak, Nic Zapko, Patty Gordon, and Jim Potter.

The banquet was held on Friday night, emceed by the charismatic Albert Walla. In a packed room, attendees ate delicious food, enjoyed a slideshow of photos from the past two years, watched SooHyun Tak and NAD Region II Representative Linsay Darnall, Jr., share a few words of wisdom, and gave out awards to several very surprised individuals. Award recipients included:

Petra Howard Award: Toni Fairbanks
MADC Appreciation Award: Mike Monge, Faribault Fire Chief
MADC Appreciation Award: Mary Hartnett, MCDHH Executive Director
Gordon Allen Community Award: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division
Deaf Minnesotan Award: Sherri Rademacher
Wesley Lauristen Award: Dianne & Ric-Olin Lyles
MADC Presidents' Award: Ralph Fuechtmann

The MADC President's Award is typically presented by the president, but for this particular time, all the presidents that Ralph Fuechtmann had worked under co-presented the award. Ralph has served on the board since 1981 - with eight presidents – and vowed this was his last term. He then changed his mind and was elected the 2007-2009 vice president!

Saturday saw the elections take place, and the 2007-2009 board includes:

President: Emory K. Dively
Vice President: Ralph Fuechtmann
Treasurer: Ric-Olin Lyles
Secretary: Cynthia Weitzel
Members at Large: Linda Durand, Jane Harders, Galinda Goss-Kuehn, Alicia Lane and Barbara Schmidt

Saturday's entertainment was a family-friendly, hilarious variety show co-directed by Galinda K. Goss-Kuehn and Andrew Oehrlein. People were rolling in the aisles, laughing at the zany skits. The conference ended with a reception-style social night.

Major conference sponsors included CSDVRS, Sprint, CSD, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division, and Minnesota Commission Serving Deaf and Hard of Hearing People. Other sponsors also included ASL Interpreting Services, Kramer Financial Services, T.S. Writing Services, PEPNet, DEAF-MADC, Harris Communications, i711.com, Paradigm Captioning, MRID, CaptionMax, Sorenson Communications, College of St. Catherine/CATIE Center, and Digiterp Communications.

Special kudos must be given to the co-conference chairs, Ric-Olin Lyles and Dianne Lyles, who were able to achieve a conference that was overwhelmingly positive, educational and successful. Committee members who went above and beyond the call of duty included Jane Harders, Diane Leonard, Marian Lucas, Jerry Pouliot and Sherri Rademacher. Thanks to all who made this historical conference happen.

The 2009 conference will be held in St. Cloud.