Cambridge Homeowner's Association

CAMBRIDGE CORNER

Apr 08, 2002

Happy Birthday to Gladys Williams and Dolores Williams (Lyon Dr.). We wish you the best this year. Dolores says a Bible study is held at her home, 5008 Lyon Dr, Sunday mornings at 9:30, and invites all who wish to attend.
Congratulations to Vincent "Bim" Wood (Lyon Dr.). He received the "Public Personnel Employee Award" from the Oklahoma City Mayor's Committee on disability Concerns in November. The award recognized his efforts in developing the Hazardous Weather Pager Program, which provides deaf and hard-of-hearing Oklahomans better access to hazardous weather information via alphanumeric pagers. The award was presented by Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys, and Commitee Chairman George Lewis.
Wood, who has been deaf since infancy, had the original idea for the pager program. Following the May 3, 1999 tornado outbreak, he conducted a nine-month survey that revealed 81 percent of deaf and hard-of-hearing people have experienced fear about being unprepared for weather emergencies, and they have relatively limited ways of knowing severe weather is approaching. They wanted access to the same critical information that hearing people receive from the audio portion of NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts. Wood explained that that alphanumeric pagers would be an ideal notification method for people concerned about hazardous weather catching them off guard. The pilot project, which is believed to first of its kind in the United States, provides life-saving messages abouttornadoes, severe thunderstorms, winter storms, flash floods, river floods, and high wind warnings from local National Weather Service offices to deaf and hard-of-hearing people who sign up for the service. It is expected to be expanded throughout Oklahoma during 2002, and Wood says he hopes it will serve as a model for other states.
We also want to congratulate three other Cambridge residents who were recently in the news. Cambridge songwriter/composer Loaetta Reddington (Ramsey St.) released her new gospel CD, "Ride Bridegroom Ride", in mid-November. The CD contains eleven original works by Reddington. Two of the songs, "The Elephant Song" and "Freedom's Home" lent themselves to children's voices as part of her accompaniment. Since all her grandchildren live too far away to participate, she chose to use children here in Norman. Two of those children were her neighbor, John Baugher's grandsons, who played with Reddington's grandchildren, Molly and Thomas, before they moved to Germany with the Air Force. J.D. and Andrew Baugher, are the sons of Mr. and Mrs. Doug Baugher (Baker St.). J.D. and Andrew attend Truman Elementary, where J.D. sings in the honor choir.
Send your special events or other news to Margaret Williams, magel1@juno.com, or call 579-5879.