Speech center rededicated at UMaine

ORONO – In 1959, the parents of a little boy from Orono with severe hearing loss were told their son could not learn to speak because he was diagnosed with “expressive aphasia,” or brain damage.

Doctors at a prestigious Massachusetts hospital said the 4-year-old child would never succeed, being both deaf and “brain-damaged,” unless he was institutionalized in a special school for the deaf in Massachusetts.

Unwilling to accept such a catastrophic prognosis, the mother, an Orono school nurse, and the father, a traveling coffee salesman, believed, correctly as it turned out, that their son had been misdiagnosed.

They sought out a full-time speech therapist in Maine. There were only two back then – one in Portland and one in Waterville – a time when there was no Interstate 95 to make travel easier or financial assistance to help with therapy for a boy who could barely pronounce 20 words, at an age when most children know 1,500. The chances of finding vital, accessible year-round speech therapy for their son looked bleak.

“I’d always felt the Bangor area needed a therapist and it should be at the university,” the mother recalled. If they had such difficulty finding a full-time speech therapist closer to Bangor, then “we needed to start a course at the university to train them,” she remembered telling both her husband and then-University of Maine President Lloyd H. Elliott.

That impetus, combined with the generosity of 1911 University of Maine graduate Albert Conley, led to the initial funding of what is today a comprehensive teaching, research and clinical center serving more than 1,000 clients a year. It contributes significantly to advancements in the field of communication disorders and produces much-needed speech, language and hearing clinicians for the state.

In recognition of Albert Conley’s generosity and that of his late wife, Madelyn Conley, university officials, staff, faculty and others gathered April 1 at Bodwell Lounge at the Maine Center for the Arts to rededicate what is now the Madelyn E. and Albert D. Conley Speech, Language and Hearing Center.

Madelyn Conley, a 1939 UMaine graduate who became the state’s first woman optometrist, continued her husband’s support for the speech and hearing center after his death in 1974 with a $1.2 million gift in 2001. Born in Harmony, raised in Guilford and Winter Harbor, she practiced in Portland, and later Brunswick and Winthrop, before she died at age 87 in Cumberland.

Among the speakers at the rededication ceremonies was the now-grown little boy from Orono, whose mother lobbied tirelessly for a program at the university that would help her son and others with speech, hearing or other communication disorders.

O.J. Logue, the 48-year-old assistant dean of academic services in the University of Maine College of Education and Human Development, told the gathering how grateful he was for the treatment that turned his life around, beginning with that first summer session.

Now in its 41st year, the Conley Center hosts the only university program in Maine to offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication sciences and disorders. The department has graduated more than 200 speech, language and hearing professionals in the last decade alone. The university estimates that 80 percent of those graduates still work in Maine.

The center provides speech, language and audiological services to the university and surrounding communities. It also maintains family treatment, stuttering and audiology clinics and offers educational outreach services at public and private schools in Maine.

Madelyn Conley’s bequest in 2001 allowed the center to introduce graduate fellowships to promising students, undertake facility renovations and continue providing state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment services, in addition to helping faculty members in the department stay abreast of the latest educational advancements, said Conley Center Clinical Director Susan K. Riley.

“I think what we can do that is unique is to be a center for excellence and a resource for the both the public and the professional community,” Riley said. “An important part of our mission is to offer the expertise of well-recognized, experienced faculty and the resources of an educational setting where clinical research is ongoing.”

In the early 1960s, however, starting a speech and hearing clinic and a new university degree program to train speech, language and hearing therapists was complex, potentially expensive and delved into a field still in its infancy.

But Joan Logue made her case persuasively with university president Elliott, who contacted Albert Conley, a Portland native and successful chemical engineer and physicist who spent his post-retirement years in Freeport, about funding a speech and hearing clinic. Conley struggled with stuttering for much of his life, and previously had contributed to the university. He established the Albert D. Conley Scholarship Fund in 1961 for students with disabilities – specifically speech disorders.

“Conley called and said to Elliott, ‘You find the people and we’ll find you the money and we’ll start a summer program and see how it goes,'” Joan Logue said.

The rest is history.

In 1963, the University of Maine Speech and Hearing Clinic opened in the Maples building. O.J. Logue was among the first group of young clients, coming from areas as close as residential housing on the University of Maine campus and as far away as Aroostook County.

The child who couldn’t hear properly, and who “didn’t know, for the longest time, that music had words” because of his inability to properly separate sounds, Logue succeeded with his therapy and went on to earn bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

After 25 years in a variety of public and private jobs, teaching, counseling and working with students with disabilities and special needs, Logue returned to Orono in 2000 to become an assistant dean.

“I considered Fred Wolf the greatest influence in my life, after my parents,” Logue said, reflecting back to the campus clinic’s first summer speech and hearing therapist who’d come from Nyack, N.Y. “The greatest challenge of my life was going to college and getting my doctorate.”

Riley was heartened by the recent realization that Logue was one of the first clients in the summer session clinic.

“It’s such a wonderful example of how this center can make a difference in a person’s life,” she said.

Logue agreed. And as he recently upgraded to a set of new digital hearing aids, he discovers new sounds, almost daily, he said.

“I don’t know how to put it in words, but I never take for granted what I have in life,” Logue said. “I just feel very blessed to be back here in Orono and to be on this campus.”