Mike Spaulding Story of Service

Mike Spaulding: “Embrace the differences!”

By Nellie Ohr, based on a conversation with Mike and Doug Spaulding, December 1, 2023

“I’m addicted to language,” Mike Spaulding says. As a high-schooler he chose American Sign Language (ASL) as his foreign language elective “because It looked like a fun class to take and there were some good-lookin’ girls I knew who were going to be taking it.” Little did he know that his ASL skills would bring joy to his loved ones in the dark days after his traffic accident on April 16, 2000 that put him in a coma for 6 weeks and left him with a traumatic brain injury.

Doug recounts the scene in the hospital: “You were still in a coma and you were pretty non-responsive. The doctor would come in on a pretty much daily basis...and he would try all kinds of things to get Mike to respond and he wouldn’t. After some lengthy period of time, a couple of weeks or so, there were little glimmers of response.... at one point, when Mom was in the room with you, you showed a sign, the ‘I love you’ sign [combining the signs for the letter i for “I,” the L for ‘love’, and the Y for ‘you‘].....For awhile, nobody knew exactly what that was about. Then Mom recognized it. Once we recognized it was sign language, Mom went out to the nurse’s station and said, ‘He’s signing!’ Chrissy, his sister was there, and she went out and bought some basic sign language books, so we could understand what he was doing. That became the mode of communication for a number of days.”

Mike adds, “So it’s a good thing I went to class once in a while when I was in high school! The class was interesting and I liked the teacher. He himself was completely deaf, so he had to know what he was teaching....something I grabbed onto was that it was tactile language, involving making use of the hands and the face.”

In the years since, Mike has used ASL or other languages to make connections with people he meets. “I have held a number of different positions through the county, including the NoVa Training Center and through therapeutic recreation services, working with both kids and adults who [have] a wide variety of disabilities, so I’ve been able to use my limited knowledge of sign language to communicate with some of the participants in those programs. I consider sign language to be fun!” Mike also introduced some sign language phrases to his niece and nephew when they were young: not just the “I love you” sign but also “thank you” [holding hand up to lips and moving it outward] and “you’re welcome” [open hand in front of you, closing it while bringing it in toward yourself, as if accepting the person’s thanks]. “More” [touching the fingertips of both hands together] is another good one for little kids, he said. 

Mike also uses ASL to converse with a deaf person he sees at the golf course. “It’s a good case of finding a use for my limited knowledge in the real world,” he says. Doug adds, “They both get big smiles on their faces when they see each other at the driving range, and they spend a long time talking back and forth.”

Doug continues, “Mike has always been fearless about language, but particularly after his accident. He tries to speak Spanish to anyone he sees who looks remotely Hispanic. There are probably a lot of Arabic speakers who hear Mike trying to speak with them in Spanish!” If they tell him they don’t speak Spanish, he tries a greeting in Arabic: “Assalamu alaykum!” (“peace be with you!”) “Mike has always been open to differences, different people, different ideas. At the same time, he doesn’t see a lot of differences, he sees people as being people. And he has had experience in dealing with people who have differences.”
 
Mike adds, “From early on, I remember [it was in] middle school or early high school, I took some ESL [English as a Second Language] Partners and Friends class through school and that was opening my eyes to different cultures and how we can work together with different cultures. ...Our world is made up of differences all around....embrace the differences!”

“Working with individuals with disabilities, physical and/or mental...is a very rewarding and fulfilling use of time..... So I would suggest that anyone and everyone should work with people with disabilities. It attracted me because it’s like working with ‘my kin’. I’ve been in that boat.... Just the knowledge that there was a time when I could barely get out of the wheelchair and I couldn’t walk, whatever.....I was in their shoes and somebody helped me, so who am I not to help someone else.” 

Mike had a job at the Northern Virginia Training Center, a residential facility for adults with severe disabilities. Doug recalls one of the people Mike worked with, a non-verbal individual, “when he would see you, he would get so excited, and happy, and wave his arms.” Even though the training center is now closed, Mike continues to reach out to all the people he meets. Doug says, “We’ve joked about how he will make friends in the checkout line at Giant with the people who are behind him in line, and by the time you check out your groceries, people are among his best friends. And Mike takes a walk almost every day -- he walks 2-1/2 miles -- and he is best friends with all the neighborhood walkers. I think he could run for mayor of our subdivision. He’s just open and friendly to everyone he encounters, and the sign language is just one of the skills he has that he’s not afraid to use.” Mike adds, “Sign language y un poco de español.”

Mike concludes, “It takes a team. It takes a world. When I think about who helped bring me back through all the years, who has helped bring me to this point in my life, it has truly been the world. Primarily my family, my mom and my dad, but different groups throughout....PAX has been an essential primary source of prayers and well wishes, but truly I am where I am today and capable of doing what I can do thanks to the help of the world.... 
It's a benefit to have a bad memory---you forget about the bad [people] quick.....”