A personal note from TRI's Amy Parker, Coordinator of Professional Development and Products with the National Center on Deaf-Blindness, about a boy named Ethan.

I wanted to share with you a very special issue of the Council of Exceptional Children's Division on Visual Impairments and Deafblindness quarterly journal.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of a boy named Ethan Wolfe who passed away unexpectedly in October, 2014.  Ethan's mother Jody served as a parent leader during our last cycle of module creation and helped us write a module that will be field tested this Winter.  The module is called "Maximizing Vision and Hearing".  

Before Ethan passed away, Jody and I were collaborating on using Ethan's image for the cover of the magazine.  On a beautiful fall day, she and her family had captured Ethan standing beside a large pumpkin in a park and this image was selected to be on the cover of the issue. When I received the call to learn that Ethan, who had CHARGE Syndrome, had passed away without warning, I felt the grief of Ethan's beautiful parents and of an international community that advocates for the education of all children who are deafblind. Jody graciously allowed our journal to keep Ethan's image, as planned, on the cover of the journal.

Ethan's life and his successes will be an ongoing part of training future interveners and others about the strengths of individuals who are deafblind. The love and efforts of thousands of families and educators are reflected in the videos, the stories, the images, and the challenges that are shared in these modules.  The hope of this work is to share the best of what we know to make a difference in the lives of students who are deafblind wherever they live and to support more opportunities to prepare interveners.

Thank you for being a part of this community and for celebrating Ethan's life and the work of his parents, Jody and David Wolfe, today.

Here is the link to the publication page where one can access the virtual copy, pdf or word versions of the issue: http://community.cec.sped.org/dvi/publications

Here is the direct link to the online version:http://dvi.uberflip.com/i/422067

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