Good news

Video of deaf woman hearing her voice for first time after Houston surgery isInternet sensation

With all the depressing news going around nowadays, it's nice to hear something uplifting. Perhaps that's why this video of a deaf woman listening to her voice for the first time is so moving.

According to her blog, 29-year old Sarah Churman, a self-described Texas "stay-at-home mommy, trophy wife and dog groomer," was born with profound hearing loss and has worn hearing aids since she was two years old. She reads lips to understand what people say but had never heard the sound of her own voice.

After receiving a device that was implanted in her middle ear and picks up sound through her ear canal, she was recently able to hear her voice for the first time — and as her reaction shows, the results are amazing.

Churman received the implant in Houston a couple of months ago at Envoy Medical and returned there last week to have it turned on. The St. Paul, Minn.-based company opened a center in The Woodlands that specializes in the ear implant surgery last year after the Food and Drug Administration approved Envoy’s Esteem hearing technology, "an implantable system that converts mechanical vibrations from the eardrum into electrical signals, boosts and cleans up the signals, and converts the signals back into vibrations it then transmits into the cochlea," Med City News reported. It is the first fully implantable device to treat hearing loss in the United States.

Among the investors in Envoy is Houston Rockets coach Kevin McHale, whose wife, Lynn, is the sister of the company's CEO Patrick Spearman. Watch the FOX 26 video that explains the connection.

McHale's In-Laws No Stranger to Houston: MyFoxHOUSTON.com

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Thanks, Queen Bey

Pop icon Beyoncé donates $100,000 to University of Houston Law School

Photo by Erza Shaw Getty Images

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Pop megastar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has donated $100,000 to the University of Houston Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic through her BeyGOOD Foundation. The gift will allow the clinic to hire fill-time faculty to head it, benefiting the students who study there.

“I am delighted that the BeyGOOD Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” said Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”

The clinic is one of nine at UHLC. It helps students learn to navigate the criminal justice system, especially on behalf of clients that are underserved by skilled attorneys. People of color are affected disproportionately by a lack of good, ethical representation.

Beyoncé, the most decorated artist in Grammy history and easily the biggest musical star native to Houston, has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform. She was a staunch supporter of the police reform following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, asking law enforcement to “stop killing us” in a web post. In 2020, she penned an open letter to the Kentucky attorney general asking for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Through her BeyGOOD Foundation, established in 2013, Beyoncé has focused mostly on expanding the prospects of Black-owned business and offering education opportunities to students. Forwarding the cause of legal representation in Texas while also helping out marginalized communities compliments her other philanthropic work.

“At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGOOD envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings,” Baynes said. “And together, through this gift, the BeyGOOD Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”