Rick Clarkson knocked on the door after learning the woman residing inside had a plumbing issue. He had only been on the job as the Executive Director of the Corliss Institute for a matter of days, but with no one else immediately around to answer the call, he sought to address the issue right away.
But there was a problem, because the woman couldn’t hear him knocking at her door.
Like many of the people who rent condos from one of the Corliss Institute’s group homes in uptown Warren, she was deaf. But even after getting her attention utilizing the Telecommunications Relay Services, Clarkson learned while signing with the woman that she had also become mostly blind due to another condition she had developed. But Clarkson persisted.
“Our maintenance guy called a local plumber, and he got there in an hour,” he recalled. “Like, where else does that happen?”
It’s an anecdote that pretty perfectly encapsulates the value of the Corliss Institute, a nonprofit organization that for around 40 years has sought to provide a variety of services to developmentally disabled people who are also deaf.
From EastBayRI article on July 23, 2023. Read the full article.