Barbara Schmidt of Coon Rapids was honored nationally with the Metlife Foundation’s 2008 Older Volunteers Enrich America Award. (Photo by Sue Austreng)

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Staff writer

Barbara Schmidt’s life overflows with activity, abounds with passion and permeates the lives of those around her with hope, with help, with life, with dignity.

Schmidt, a hearing-impaired resident of Coon Rapids, travels the country, holding hands, lifting hearts and opening eyes to the needs of her peers: the aging population of the deaf and hard of hearing.

For her passionate and untiring efforts on behalf of senior citizens, the Metlife Foundation recently recognized Schmidt with the Older Volunteers Enrich America Award.

The silver trophy, presented in the Team Spirit category of the 2008 awards, honors Schmidt for her work in assisting other older adults living with hearing loss.

Words – and unfailing fervor – never fail Schmidt as she communicates the needs and desires of those for whom sound has failed.

“They’ll be in hospice or hospital or clinic and they feel so alone,” Schmidt said. No one knows their language, so how can they let them know what they need or what’s wrong or what to do?

“It can be so isolating, so frightening, so humiliating, so upsetting. Someone needed to stand up and help. I was asked to get involved, so I tried it and I love it.”

The Older Volunteers Enrich America award recognizes Schmidt for her work with the Deaf Hospice Education and Volunteer Project (DHEVP), an endeavor she began as founding member of the project.

“I do this to serve the deaf and hard of hearing, to teach about the rights and the needs of deaf people to people working in hospice, in hospitals, in clinics,” Schmidt said.

Members of the DHEVP give workshops in hospitals and hospices around the country. Their message is so profound and so vital, they’ve recently created a workshop manual, complete with forms and questionnaires, frequently asked questions, a listing of the rights of the deaf and hard of hearing, testimonials and a glossary of terms.

“Now we’re trying to get more volunteers – deaf and hearing-impaired people – to visit hospice patients,” Schmidt said. “There are a few hospices in this area, and no one should have to be in that situation and feel alone. But it happens, so we need more volunteers.”

Why, until Schmidt came along, an American Sign Language sign for the word “hospice” didn’t exist.

So Schmidt created one. It’s the signed letter “h” held over the heart.

“Help from the heart. That’s what hospice is. That’s what this means,” she said, forming the sign.

Schmidt, hearing impaired since she fell and broke her eardrum at the age of two, refuses to let her disability thwart her passion for life.

The Older Volunteers Enrich America Award winner’s advocacy efforts have been recognized and applauded throughout the years.

For a quarter-century’s time, Schmidt served as president of the Bread of Life Lutheran Church for the Deaf in Minneapolis and still serves on its board.

For the Minnesota Deaf Senior Citizens group, she has served as vice president, secretary and president.

She is board member for the Deaf Seniors of America.

Schmidt has been recognized for her achievement and celebrated for her service.

And for simply being who she is, Schmidt recently received the Deaf Seniors’ Woman of the Year Award.

Despite a complete loss of hearing in one ear and only partial hearing in the other, Schmidt, 73, has led a long and adventurous life.

She was born in Minneapolis and attended the Deaf School in Faribault, graduating in 1955.

She attended Gallaudet University for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., but after just one year Schmidt “came home to marry my childhood sweetheart,” she said.

Married 42 years, Schmidt and her husband raised three children and she worked as a keypunch operator for the Tenant Company and for the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office in St. Paul.

After her husband died in 1997, Schmidt threw herself “100 percent into volunteering.”

Not that she doesn’t pursue a few hobbies during moments away from her tireless volunteer efforts.

She enjoys cross-stitching, scrapbooking and card making.

“People ask, ‘How do you have time for anything else?’ I tell them, ‘No TV!’ That’s how you do that,” Schmidt said.

These days, Schmidt’s life is filled with the sounds of activity and creation, celebration and praise, as she works on her church’s upcoming convention, plans the next gathering of the Deaf Seniors of America, books a flight for her next speaking engagement, recruits volunteers to conduct hospice visits, fine-tunes a workshop delivery, creates an artistic page in the scrapbook, writes inspiring words in a homemade card, drives a friend to a doctor’s appointment...

“There’s never a dull moment,” she said.

Sue Austreng is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .