"People are supposed to be getting along, not ridiculing and passing judgment on each other, I do a bit in my act about a black man I met in Chattanooga.  He was a skinny little man about 71 years old; he was my bellhop.  I fell in love with the man, I thought he was adorable." 

She couldn't help herself - she'd hug and kiss him. 

"Ma'am, do you know that I'm black?" he'd say. 

"And I go, When did this happen?  Does it hurt?" 

And he said, "Sometimes...  but you can't be kissing on me down here, people are going to be talking about you!"

And I said, "That's OK, John, I'm deaf.  I'm not gonna hear a thing they say."

(May, 1995)

"When you start building a name, you can use the name to help make contributions back into society.  And I've done a lot already:  I meet doctors on the road and I make them give me a business card and they have to donate surgery.  Then what I do is I take my frequent fliers and I give them to a child to fly to that hospital and get that surgery." (June, 1995) "There is not a child today who can't accomplish something," said Kathy Buckley (keynote speaker at the New York State Parks Games for the Physically Challenged), "don't worry about what you don't have.  It's about what you do have." (July 1995)

The cause of her deafness is still unknown - perhaps a bout with spinal meningitis - but Buckley says it's not something she dwells on.  "It doesn't make any difference where I lost it," she says.  "I know I'm not going to find it."

(April 1996)

Buckley herself had an offer of medical help recently.  Dr. Steven Hoefflin, plastic surgeon to Michael Jackson, was so moved by a motivational speech she gave that he offered her breast augmentation surgery.  Buckley, who often makes fun of the size of her breasts, declined the doctor's kind offer.  Instead she got him to agree to donate surgery to a disfigured child.  Hoefflin responded by saying he'd help two kids.

(January 1997)

Kathy's Scrapbook Timeline - Click any Number to Go:

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