Brad, that is fantastic. Thanks for sharing that with us.
I will be praying for Vick and his family.
Love,
Pat Ferguson
At 07:23 AM 6/9/2006, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>Some of you may remember a brother from the list
>some time ago, Vic Llanes. Aside from his wife
>battling and winning the fight with Thyroid
>cancer fairly recently. They were up for
>candidates of a TV show called Extreme Makeover,
>where they take someone's house and either
>update or just completely tear it down and
>rebuild... no less. I don't think Vic would mind me sharing the below note...
>
>Hello Brad,
>I'm finally back online after a long time of
>being sequestered, I mean my family and myself.
>We have indeed been through the extreme makeover that I was
>telling you that might happen and it did. We
>were sent to Disney world. I cannot talk about
>any details for now until our show has been aired so please
>excuse me if I'm a little vague. All I can say
>right now is that God is good, no matter what.
>There are lots and lots of articles about us but
>this was one of the first to come out from a
>google search. If you care to try at google, just use these
>as your keywords:
>"bergenfield llanes extreme makeover"
>Thanks so much for everything Brad.
>always, Vic.
>begin article
>NJ.com's Printer-Friendly Page
>Home makeover a welcome reality for blind, deaf family
>Thursday, May 25, 2006
>By KEVIN COUGHLIN
>NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
>Cell-cams and iPods make life more fun. Every
>now and then, gadgets also make life better. A
>house in Bergenfield should be a prime example.
>Yes, this involves reality TV. Still, it's a
>pretty safe bet that about $100,000 of donated
>technology that was installed for free earlier this month -
>from talking thermostats to pulsating smoke
>alarms to specialized communications gear - will
>make a real difference for the home's blind and deaf occupants
>once the camera crews vanish.
>"The family was not disabled. The house was
>disabled. We're enabling the house," actress
>Marlee Matlin said May 8, as jackhammers jackhammered, tractors
>tractored and a swarm of construction volunteers
>voluntarily constructed a new home for the Llanes family of Bergen County.
>Matlin, who is deaf, will host a two-hour
>episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" to air on ABC in July.
>The Llanes 50-year-old split- level house was
>small, dark, noisy and hard to navigate before
>volunteers demolished it over the weekend.
>But obstacles are nothing new for this clan.
>Blind from a hereditary disease, Vicente Llanes,
>42, came from the Philippines in 1997 seeking
>medical treatment. His mother, Isabel, is blind. His wife,
>Maria, a physical therapist, is battling thyroid
>cancer. Daughters Guenivir and Carrie are going
>blind from the same disease their father has, and teenage
>son Zeb is deaf because his mother contracted German measles during pregnancy.
>Recently, the show's producers told family
>members they were chosen from thousands of
>applicants and sent them to Walt Disney World while the house was
>being rebuilt. On May 11, they returned to a
>home nearly twice as large as the
>1,300-square-foot original, now dubbed a "Z Home" for its A- to-Z technology,
>by Brian Stolar of the Pinnacle Companies, the
>Chatham builders overseeing the project.
>There will be smoke sensors that give spoken
>warnings, a Braille printer that can be
>controlled wirelessly by computers throughout the house, and "iCommunicator"
>software to convert speech into sign-language video clips - in real time.
>A Hackensack company called GoAmerica is
>supplying BlackBerrys and a relay service, so
>Zeb Llanes (pronounced "Lee-ann-is") can communicate by phone with
>his mom by sending text messages to an operator.
>The handheld "Colorino" can scan and say the
>colors of clothes and other objects. Stevie
>Wonder used the device to tease visitors about their ethnicity
>at a trade show, said Fran Hennelly of
>Independent Living Aids, a Long Island company on hand for a media preview.
>Jon Gabry, a Kearny teen who is blind and deaf,
>showed off the BrailleNote, a keyboard that lets
>him type Web queries and then read the results in Braille.
>Paired with a GPS satellite tracking device and
>mapping software, the BrailleNote can tell blind
>users exactly where they are, with directions to nearby
>restaurants.
>Home Automated Living has software called - what
>else? - HAL, to let the Llanes family program
>lighting, heating and security systems via microphones, telephones,
>the TV or the Web. About the only thing HAL
>won't do, company President Tim Shriver said, is
>work with Apple computers. (Microsoft is among the project's
>donors.)
>Many people with disabilities "don't even know
>all this exists," said Joanne Castellano of
>Shrewsbury's Family Resources Associates, a training agency.
>Some can't afford such technology, which doesn't
>benefit from the same cost-shrinking economies
>of scale as many consumer gadgets. Government aid often
>is tied to employment, experts said.
>Blind since birth, Richard Fox remembers typing
>school papers, only to be told later that the typewriter ribbon was shot.
>"Some of this can make life tremendously
>easier," said Fox, who coaches the disabled for
>DeWitt & Associates of Midland Park. "But if you don't have a positive
>attitude and confidence, (technology) won't help
>you, whether it's a typewriter or this other stuff."
>The Llanes family should catch on fast. Vicente,
>a naturalized citizen, has designed software for
>the blind and digitized books for a nonprofit called BookShare.
>Zeb also is computer savvy, and other family
>members are active with church and civic groups,
>according to publicists for the show.
>"The most important thing is the Llaneses were a
>happy family before we got here, and they will
>be happier after we leave," said Matlin, an Oscar winner
>for "Children of a Lesser God" in 1986.
>© 2006 The Jersey Journal
>© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
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