The Daily Times

“Can you hear me now?”

This familiar catch-phrase of a cell phone provider also applies to a Maryville-based institution that is reaching out to the world.

The Hearing and Speech Foundation plans to be heard far and wide as it seeks to expand understanding of the verbotonal method of aural rehabilitation.

The objective is to provide hearing-impaired people, especially children, with good spoken language and listening skills.

To that end, the foundation in June appointed a new board of directors, named Alan Boeckmann chairman, and is embarking on an extensive fundraising campaign.

“We’ve got a phrase that sounds corny, but it is true. We really want Maryville to become the Mayo Clinic of hearing impairment,” Boeckmann said.

Boeckmann brings management skills to the task — having recently retired as chief executive officer of the Fluor Corp., where he is still chairman of the board. The Fortune 500 company employs 42,000 people on six continents and delivers engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance, and project management services to governments and clients in diverse industries around the world.

He has a belief: “The verbotonal method has world-class application, proven with research and real live examples of people who came in as children and have grown into adults.”

He has a reason: “There is a huge counterflow of treatments that do not use this system and are not as effective.”

And he has a personal motivation. Boeckmann’s son Lee was diagnosed with a hearing impairment as a child. In the family’s search to find a way for Lee to attend regular schools and participate fully in a world with people who hear normally, Boeckmann learned of the research and practice of John Berry in Maryville.

Berry is owner of Blount Hearing and Speech Services, a diagnostic hearing and speech center located at 1617 E. Broadway Ave. He uses the verbotonal method originally developed by Petar Guberina of Zagreb, Croatia, and has traveled to Croatia to study the process.

In May, he presented research on “Acoustic Measurements of Soft Speech at the Eardrum” at the International Symposium of the Verbotonal Method.

The Hearing and Speech Foundation was started in 1978 as a philanthropic endeavor by Berry and Tutt Bradford, former owner and publisher of The Daily Times.

Bradford proposed the foundation because Berry had been giving hearing aids to economically disadvantaged patients at cost and for free. With the foundation, incorporated in 1981, financial assistance could continue for patients in need, but Berry’s business would not be adversely affected. With the help of dedicated volunteers, thousands of people have received hearing aids through the foundation.

Delivered commencement address

Today, Lee Boeckmann is employed as a programmer at a Boston-based computer gaming company. His verbotonal training was so successful that he delivered the commencement address at his own college graduation ceremony.

Not that it was easy.

“The first few years we struggled,” Alan Boeckmann said. “The verbotonal method takes a long time, but he really blossomed and was able to go to a regular school.”

Now the Hearing and Speech Foundation is hoping the method blossoms to become the standard for treating hearing impairment.

From 1967 until 1981-82 Berry used the verbotonal method at the University of Tennessee. When grant money expired, UT kept the program going — but only for a while.

“It was not necessarily controversial, but it was based on principles not accepted in the field at that time,” Berry said.

As the method has gained acceptance around the world, Berry said it is time for people in the U.S. to discover the usefulness of verbotonal.

“The biggest thing in this whole issue is, with the verbotonal method, you can take whatever you are hearing and train the brain to perceive speech,” he said.

Other methods of enhancing hearing rely on amplifying frequencies the client does not hear, according to Berry. Frequently, hearing loss occurs at higher frequencies, and those are the ones amplified. With the verbotonal method, the client is trained to glean information from frequencies he or she can hear to some degree, typically in the lower range.

“Our method is to work where you do have hearing and to train the brain,” Berry said.

By utilizing rhythm and intonation patterns with the verbotonal method, the hearing impaired can develop good listening and speech skills.

With Alan Boeckmann at the helm, the Hearing and Speech Foundation plans to spread the word.

“What were doing now is taking this expertise and driving it outside of Maryville all over world,” Boeckmann said.

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