Photo By Staff Sgt. Daniel Garas | (From left) Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Jessica Wright;...... read more read more
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COLUMBUS, Ohio - The silence began for Melanie Schmechel sometime in the eighth grade. She doesn’t recall the event that led to her severe hearing loss, but a school screening test that year confirmed the disability that would challenge her for the rest of her life.
Schmechel, Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime’s director of internal review in Columbus, Ohio, has confronted those challenges for 23 years while working for the Department of Defense. Her resiliency was recognized when she was named a recipient of the 2014 Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding DoD Employees and Service Members with Disabilities Oct. 30 at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
“I was very humbled,” Schmechel said. “I’m thankful for the opportunity to work here and try to use my God-given abilities each day to support the warfighter as they protect our freedoms and our country.”
The 34th annual DoD Disability Awards ceremony highlighted the accomplishments of Schmechel and 19 other service members and civilians with disabilities. Several DoD components were also recognized for their efforts in the employment of individuals with disabilities.
Keynote speaker David Capozzi, executive director of the U.S. Access Board, an independent federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities, emphasized that the employment of people with disabilities in the federal government has increased dramatically in recent years through efforts like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“In 2010, President Obama issued an executive order on increasing federal employment of individuals with disabilities to mark the 20th anniversary of the ADA,” Capozzi said. “It committed the executive branch to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in the federal workforce, including a goal to hire 100,000 people with disabilities into federal service over five years. The federal government has already made great progress toward accomplishing those goals.”
When she first came to DLA Land and Maritime in 2009, Schmechel said that it was important that her disability be known to all of those around her. The last thing she wanted was to not respond or appear aloof when a co-worker initiated a conversation without knowing about her hearing loss.
“My experience at [DLA Land and Maritime] has been terrific,” she said. “I roll with the punches and laugh when I’ve clearly misunderstood something.”
Although having a hearing loss is difficult, it’s also different for everyone, Schmechel said. Her audiogram, a graph that shows audible frequencies, looks like an inverse arc. Also commonly referred to as a "cookie-bite" curve, her hearing loss in the very high and very low frequencies is mild, but then quickly drops to severe in the middle ranges, which is where human voices reside.
She points out that sounds can become challenging when she can’t clearly see a speaker's mouth, facial expressions or overall body language. Video teleconferences can be difficult, especially if it’s in a large room, the speaker is not pictured, or the speaker at a great distance. Her disability has not deterred her from succeeding at her job, she said.
“To compensate for my hearing loss, I wear hearing aids and read lips, probably way more than anyone realizes,” she said. “In today's environment, technology like phone conversations and virtual meetings can still be challenging, but they’ve gotten easier. Thank heaven for volume buttons.”
A married mother of two, Schmechel said she hopes to use this award as an inspiration to others with disabilities.
“I realized that we’ve all been given a unique set of talents and abilities, and that even our disabilities can be used by God to encourage and positively impact someone else's life,” she said. “So, use all of who you are to encourage someone else and make them smile today. Then do it all over again tomorrow. Embrace your disability.”
(DLA Public Affairs contributed to this article.)
| Date Taken: | 10.30.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 11.05.2014 08:55 |
| Story ID: | 147019 |
| Location: | COLUMBUS, OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 115 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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