Family ties bring about housing complex for deaf seniors

Grace Lancelotta knows all too well the pain deaf people often experience when they reach their senior years.

As the only hearing member of her family, she witnessed firsthand the physical and emotional barriers her loved ones faced when they needed to go into nursing homes.

“It was hard when my father went into a nursing home,” Lancelotta recalled. “It was like a prison. He had no one who could talk to him. It was so lonely for him.”

When her sister went into a nursing home some years later, Lancelotta feared that the same lonely fate would confront her older sibling. That’s when she came up with the idea of creating a place where deaf seniors could live in community with one another.

“I just thought it would be nice if deaf people had a place where they could live with other deaf people,” said the 78-year-old parishioner at St. Joseph’s Passionist Monastery Church in Baltimore.

She ran the suggestion by her son, Jim Lancelotta, a Baltimore-area developer, and promised him that she and other members of the family would give him the land to build the deaf senior housing community.

Jim Lancelotta agreed to the idea and collaborated with the Maryland Association of the Deaf about building the center for deaf seniors.

Ground was broken this summer in Baltimore County for the nation’s first elderly housing complex dedicated exclusively to the needs of deaf and hearing-impaired seniors.

“When you think about it, very little of our society is set up to accommodate any kind of special needs,” Jim Lancelotta, a parishioner at St. Mark Parish in Catonsville, told The Catholic Review.

“When a deaf person shops, how many cashiers know sign language?” he asked “If you are in a hospital, how many nurses can sign? How many apartments are set up to meet the visual needs that allow a deaf individual to maintain an independent lifestyle?”

The new community, called Wyndholme Village, “can answer `yes’ to all these questions,” he added.

The gated 34-acre site will include 928 residential condominiums as well as a 90-room hotel, conference center, retail establishments and a host of other amenities. Residential units will include individual apartments, assisted living units and skilled care units and will be available for both rental and sale.

The first of seven phases of development, which will consist of 108 residential condominiums, a library, cafe and activity center, is scheduled for occupancy in the summer of 1999. Remaining phases are scheduled to open at 12- and 18-month intervals.

The center will also include areas where residents can go for reflection — a nonsectarian atrium area and a grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Grace Lancelotta said the features were her only conditions for letting her son build on the property.

“We’ve always had May processions here,” she said. “I wanted Jim to keep one area for the Blessed Mother.”

Grace Lancelotta said she will live in the new housing complex and hopes to work there as well, joining the approximately 25 deaf employees expected to be on staff in phase one.

There are approximately 9 million adults in the United States over the age of 55 who are deaf or hearing-impaired. More than 50 percent of Wyndholme’s residents are expected to be from areas other than the East Coast.

Email George Matysek at gmatysek@CatholicReview.org

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