Making A Difference: An Occasional Series Profiling North Idaho’S Community Leaders Help For Hearing Impaired Since Moving To Hayden, John Centa Has Been North Idaho’S Leader For The Hard Of Hearing

When John Centa learned his hearing was flawed a half century ago, it never occurred to him to learn sign language.

“You can’t treat the hard of hearing the same as deaf people,” he says. “The deaf are visually centered.

The hard-of-hearing want to use whatever hearing they have to stay in the hearing world.”

That conviction has pushed Centa, 82, into the activist’s role where he’s evolved into Idaho’s foremost champion for the hard of hearing population.

“He believes in what he’s doing,” says Pat Young, director of the state’s Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. “And everything he’s done is right. He’s been the leader of the hard of hearing in the state.”

Centa was 30 and testing a recording film for duPont Co. when he noticed everyone else in the room taking notes as if they heard something on the film. He’d heard nothing.

“It was a shocker to me,” he says, his unruly white brows pulling into a frown.

He suspects the problem dates back to a severe case of measles he suffered as a child. After that bout, adults chided him often for inattentiveness. He had to sit close to his teachers to hear in school.

Hearing aids changed his world considerably.

“I didn’t know birds could sing, for heaven’s sake,” he says.

After he retired in 1978, Centa and his wife, Elinor, moved from the East Coast to Hayden to be near their daughter, Judy Meyer. Technology wasn’t as widespread in Idaho as in the East then.

Centa had his home phone adapted for use with his hearing aid.

“But I was phone deaf as soon as I left home,” he says.

About the same time, Elinor showed her husband a story in “Modern Maturity” about a new organization, Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing - SHHH.

The grass roots group lobbied for assistive devices in public buildings and offered people with hearing problems information on and even test runs of the latest equipment.

Centa contacted the founder who invited him to share his phone problems with legislators in Washington, D.C. Centa warned GTE that he was about to testify on the nation’s center stage to Idaho’s technological backwardness.

GTE quickly adapted 70 pay phones throughout the Panhandle for use with hearing aids. Now, such technology is required by law.

Centa started the nation’s second SHHH chapter in Hayden in 1981.

Half his time he lobbied for assistive devices in local churches, theaters and public buildings. The rest of his time he worked at the national level, helping the hearing-aid industry understand the different needs of the hard of hearing so it could develop better equipment.

By the 1990s, he was ready to hone in on state improvements for the hard of hearing. Research showed 110,000 Idaho residents had hearing problems and only 4,000 of those were deaf.

Former state Sen. Mary Lou Reed, D-Coeur d’Alene, carried his cause to the Legislature, which then created the State Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

“It was very interesting for me to learn the difference between being born deaf and losing your hearing,” she says. “What a pleasure to work with a man as dedicated as John. He tries to make sure that people who are losing their hearing don’t have to turn the world off.”

Centa began the state’s second SHHH chapter in Boise. His two SHHH groups held free workshops to introduce people to as much latest technology as possible. They brought in experts - not sales people - to explain devices and to counsel.

The workshops were so well-attended that Centa pressed for a permanent center. Debra Gordon, director of North Idaho’s Aging and Adult Services in Coeur d’Alene, welcomed the idea and offered space.

“The community of Coeur d’Alene would not have the level of hearing-impaired equipment available to the public if John hadn’t been here,” Gordon says. “He doesn’t give up, but he does it in a nice way.”

Centa’s pushing led to a hearing screening program for infants at Kootenai Medical Center.

The intensity of his advocacy dimmed only once, as he lost Elinor to brain cancer. He remarried a year later in 1985 and nothing has slowed him since.

“He has two wives,” Helen Centa says wryly, referring to herself and her husband’s advocacy work. “And that other one gets 60 percent of his life.”

His latest project is getting the state’s Vocational Rehabilitation program to provide assistive devices to people who need help hearing at work. Young, who runs the program, has nominated Centa to the state Rehabilitation Council.

“If I don’t have something in the fire with value and meaning, I’m lost,” Centa says. “What’s the point of living if you’re not doing something useful?”