Georgia woman receives high presidential honor

By Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON -- When the doctor told Kimberly McGuiness the diagnosis, it was as if someone had picked her up and thrown her against the wall.

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AP President Barack Obama presents the 2010 Citizens Medal to Kimberly McGuiness of Cave Spring, Ga., Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Her letters, calls, and visits to state legislators helped the passage of Georgia's Deaf Child's Bill of Rights.

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Her daughter Julia, just 12 months old, was deaf.

"I was confused, angry, upset at the world," she recalled.

McGuiness stayed upset at the world for several years, she said.

And then she decided to change it.

First, she and husband Brian packed up Julia and their belongings and moved from Orlando to tiny Cave Spring, Ga., about 80 miles west of Atlanta, so Julia could attend the Georgia School for the Deaf.

McGuiness took a job with the Floyd County school board, adapting state school curriculum for deaf children. After discovering deaf children learn differently than those who can hear, she helped persuaded the state Legislature to pass the Deaf Child's Bill of Rights, requiring schools to provide equal learning opportunities for the hearing impaired. She pushed for another law stipulating that sign language can be used to fulfill foreign language requirements at state schools. And in between, she traveled Georgia tirelessly promoting programs for deaf children.

Wednesday, for all her work for deaf children, McGuiness was awarded the nation's second-highest civilian honor. With McGuiness' daughter Julia, now 21, watching, President Barack Obama presented her and 12 other Americans with the Presidential Citizens Medal, putting a little-known mother from Cave Spring in the company of past winners such as Hank Aaron, Muhammad Ali, Elizabeth Taylor and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Other 2010 winners were honored for serving the hungry and poor, working to reduce gang violence, performing  military honors for deceased veterans and helping save the environment.

The Citizens Medal was established in 1969 to recognize Americans for service to their country. This year, Obama wanted the awards to recognize Americans whose work has impacted their communities.

“What unites these citizens -- what makes them special -- is the determination they share to find a wrong and right it; to see a need and meet it; to recognize when others are suffering and take it upon themselves to make a difference,” Obama said.

In an official citation, McGuiness was cited for "demonstrating the results one citizen can achieve for an entire community."

For McGuiness, 45, those words were just as important as receiving the award from the president.

"I am honored and proud to accept it for the hard work I've done, but I'm mainly more honored and proud for what this means to our school, our community and the state of Georgia," she said in an interview before the ceremony. "This shows there's a recognition for the deaf and hard of hearing and their families."

Asked what Julia, who also is autistic, thought about her mother's award and visiting the White House, McGuiness laughed.

"She [knew] about the president ... but her biggest thrill was the flight up [to Washington] from Atlanta," she said. "She was just thrilled to death to get on the plane."