By Rita McInerney

Brent Shiver is 15, a freshman at Parkview High School and a member of the varsity wrestling team. Last month he was second place individual winner in his weight class at the state AAAA wrestling championship meet held at McEachern High School in Cobb County.

He has been wrestling since he was “a little kid in Florida, about six or seven, just for fun. I got serious when I was about nine. Dad encouraged me.”

A good student, on March 1 he brought home a report card with five A’s and one B.

Brent has been profoundly deaf since being stricken with meningitis at two and relies completely on his vision. “It seemed like the end of the world,” his mother, Kyle Shiver, recalls. She was only 24 and hadn’t “met a single person with a handicap.”

Kyle Shiver and her husband, Buck, learned to sign when Brent was five. Mrs. Kyle Shiver also interprets for her son when he signs. “Our vocabulary continues to grow.”

Among Brent’s goals is getting a wrestling scholarship to a big college. “I would be able to get accepted with my grades,” he signs as his mother expresses his thoughts. He is interested now in Arizona State University, winner of the NCAA championship last year. “They have a program for the deaf. And it’s warm there,” he explains.

“Wrestling has been a life saver. The Lord uses that as a vehicle,” his mother says. It has been “a diversion that has helped him tremendously to mature. Buck played football at Georgia Tech, but I never wanted Brent to play football. Buck was really his coach all the years he was young. He would go to practice, write everything down and then come home and coach Brent.”

“I think God led us to that sport. He excelled from the beginning. He’s acquired a lot of confidence but still gets frustrated. Brent accepts the fact that he’s not going to talk on the phone all night. In a way, it’s a blessing. We don’t have to worry about rock music. He has a lot of time to study.”

“He’s very enthusiastic and always believes he can do anything,” his mother continues. “When he started regular school in sixth grade we expected C’s and he came home with all A’s. It just amazes us.”

At Parkview High School, an interpreter is with Brent at all times during his school day, according to Susan Smith, who is with the special education department of Gwinnett County public schools.

Brent’s best friend in the neighborhood “signs great” after taking signing courses so the friends could communicate.

But the teenager cannot go to confession without having a third person present to interpret for the priest. There is no priest who can sign in the archdiocese.

“I really would like to know a priest who could sign so I could go to confession,” Brent says. As it is now, he has to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation through an interpreter.

Signing and interpreting is like learning a foreign language, his mother says. “It takes a lot of commitment.”

“My mother interprets for me at Mass,” Brent says. Mrs. Shiver tries to interpret for him at the 9 o’clock Mass on Sunday at their parish, St. John Neumann in Lilburn. A parish with 3,000 families and a tight Mass schedule, it is sometimes difficult for her to keep up with the pace of the liturgy, she admits.

“My experience (for the deaf) has been half in the church, half in the secular world,” Kyle Shiver says. “So far I have found things more open in the secular world. But most of the work for the deaf started in the churches. The Baptists have special ministers and Brent gets invited to camp and all kinds of activities.” It’s so unfortunate. The Catholic Church has so much to offer the deaf. The Mass is so visual. You can go to any town and it will be the same. Deaf people look for things that remain the same. In the Protestant churches no two services are alike.”

Along with several others who minister to the handicapped in the archdiocese, Mrs. Shiver attended the fifth national conference of the National Office for Persons with Disabilities in Portland, Ore., last summer. She was impressed when a deaf priest told of how he uses a glass chalice so that his parishioners, most of them deaf, can see the wine they are about to receive at the Eucharist. A convert, she finds that the sacraments are “interesting for the deaf.”

But she is dismayed at seeing so many young people grow up Catholic and then join the Baptist church. “If we’re going to be the body of Christ we should make sure that all the sacraments are accessible,” she believes. As a mother, she wants very much for her son to remain in the faith and to marry a Catholic girl.

“Brent prays before every match,” she says with a smile. “The coach asked us one time how many times Brent is required to cross himself during a match?”

“I feel that I’m in God’s hands,” Brent confides. “I try to do as much as I can and then I give it up to God and let Him take control. I don’t care what I achieve, I believe in God and that’s what I’m most happy with. Even though God let me have a handicap - it makes life harder than you would believe - I ignore the pain and try to be faithful and reach my goals.”

Dennis Stromie, Parkview wrestling coach, finds Brent a “super kid” who works extremely hard. He has adapted well to the team concept in this, his first year on the wrestling team, is competitive and ranks very high academically, he says.

The coach says Brent does much better in freestyle wrestling based on Olympic rules than in the scholastic version of the sport practiced in high schools. Last year Brent went to the cadet nationals at Missouri State University and finished just one match away from placing. He will compete again this summer and Stronie expects him to perform better.

Kyle and Buck Shiver came into the Catholic Church six years ago this Easter. She was Episcopalian, he a Methodist from south Georgia. “We had looked for about seven years, my time in the desert and then God hit me with a thunderbolt,” she recalls. “I was reading a newspaper and noticed an ad which asked ‘Are you looking for answers? Try the Catholic Church.” We called the number and said we needed a church with a deaf ministry. We were told of Corpus Christi. Ten minutes later Father (Thomas) Kenny called us.”

They went through the RCIA classes at the Stone Mountain parish two years. Although she knew the church was for her before Buck did, she waited. “We’re one family, one church.” Amanda, three, completes the Shiver Family.

At that time Corpus Christi parishioner Christine McDonald led an active ministry to the deaf for both parishioners and others from all around the archdiocese. There were signing classes for volunteers, volunteers to interpret the Masses and teach religious education. Twelve women made up the “Signs for Praise,” a singing choir.

Coming into the Church for Kyle Shiver was like someone who had been starved finding nourishment. “God has put such treasure in the Church. God speaks to us through handicapped people. They are carrying the crosses for us. If you want the handicapped, you have to develop an active energetic ministry of people to ‘carry them’.”

“We are the ones who reap the blessing of having the handicapped into the community and the community must make the commitment,” Kyle Shiver believes.