ESCONDIDO: Grandfather receives the gift of hearing

By RENEE RAMSEY - For the North County Times | Wednesday, December 10, 2008 12:36 PM PST ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- A grandfather's joy at receiving the gift of hearing for the holidays prompted applause, laughter and even a standing ovation this week at Palomar Medical Center.

"It's really, really a wonderful feeling," 79-year-old Escondidan Jerry Erck said about receiving a pair of hearing aids as the winner of this year's Hear for the Holidays program.

The program is sponsored by an Escondido doctor and Palomar Pomerado Health.

Erck told the gathering that after he put in his new hearing aids he could hear his favorite chair squeak for the first time, an odd rattling noise in his 11-year-old car and so many voices at a local store that he stopped just to listen in with what he called his "new ears."  

"I found out something else. My wife snores," the retired Marine said, smiling at the laughter and new rounds of applause that erupted from doctors, nurses and administrators who heard his story during a hospital board meeting Monday.

  Each year since Dr. David Illich created Hear for the Holidays in 2005, the doctor of audiology receives dozens of letters nominating patients, friends or loved ones for the annual holiday gift of donated hearing aids.

  Past winners have included a single mother of three and a school teacher who had left her job because she could not afford a hearing aid, Illich said.

  "There's nothing more beautiful than talking to your family during the holidays," Illich said. "This is a joy to me."  

Hayley Zech, 15, of Poway, the youngest of Erck's 11 grandchildren, submitted this year's winning letter. The letter described her happiness at having her grandfather in her life, but added that, because of his recent loss of hearing, "it almost feels as if he is not as much there as he was before."  

On Monday night, Zech described driving to a restaurant with her grandfather the previous evening after he recently received his new hearing aids.

"My brother and I were sitting in the back seat and he could hear us, and that has never happened before," she said. "I was so happy he won."  

Erck's wife, Joan, seated beside him at the meeting, was delighted, too.

For several years, she said, she had asked her husband of 51 years to acknowledge his hearing loss, "but it's so gradual, people don't realize they really can't hear anymore."

With his hearing aids, "it's a whole new world for us," she said.

"We were sitting around the table last night and the kids were saying, 'Grandpa, you can hear us,' " she said. "It was just such a wonderful Christmas present."  

Illich credited his mother and Hurricane Katrina for inspiring his Hear for the Holidays program. When Illich brought his mother and sister, who had lost their home in Biloxi, Miss., to stay with him in Escondido, he received generous support from his neighbors, he said.

"My mother said, 'You have to give back to the community,' " Illich said.

Illich said he got the message ---- loud and clear.