His deafness cut him off from the hearing world and created major roadblocks to communicating and interacting with other people.

In November 2004, York took a courageous step toward realizing his goal: He underwent cochlear implant surgery.

The titanium implant, inserted through the ear canal and coiled around the shell-shaped cochlea, or inner ear, receives messages and transmits them to nearby nerves. The nerves carry them to the brain, where they are interpreted as sound, in a process known as "mechanical hearing."

As he learns to better interpret the electronic messages, Greg hopes to develop better interpersonal communication skills, using speech as well as the sign language that has been his primary method of communication for most of his life.

Earning a college degree so he can get a job to support himself is his long-range goal.

The road Greg traveled from birth to the cochlear implant was long and frustrating.

At 2 1/2, he was fitted with a hearing aid. His mother, Carolyn York, began to suspect something was amiss about a year later because he was not trying to talk, but doctors told her some children, especially those with hearing loss, were slow to develop speech and advised her not to worry.

When he was 5, Carolyn took Greg to Indiana University in Indianapolis, where therapists discovered that his hearing aid had never been adjusted properly.

"He was not hearing with it, and we didn't know it," Carolyn said.

When they adjusted the hearing aid, she recalled, "He looked at me with a surprised look as if to say, 'What's that?' "

Already playing catch-up for the lost years of hearing, he suffered another setback at 7, when he suffered irreparable loss in his sensorial nerve.

Communication became an even greater challenge.

"He just pointed and made sounds," Carolyn said. "It was so difficult for him - and for me."

A walk from the house to take the trash cans to the street became a traumatic event because Carolyn had no way to make Greg understand that she was only leaving for a brief time and would return quickly.

The Yorks lived in a farming community where special services for the deaf were nonexistent. Carolyn took him to the nearest facility that could help him, an hour's drive away. The family had to rent a small apartment in the area to establish residency, which qualified Greg to attend the school because tuition was so high for out-of-city residents.

Tired, economically overburdened and frustrated, Carolyn York appealed to the state for help, since it was legally required to provide education for children with disabilities.

They told her that if she could find three students who needed similar training, the local school would establish a class. She found three other children with profound hearing loss, but the principal, unenthusiastic about having a class for the deaf in his school, claimed there was no classroom space available.

A new principal, however, found the space, and kept the classroom going, even after two of the students moved away, leaving only Greg and one other boy in the class.

The special class allowed Greg to get out of the house and, eventually, to earn a high school diploma, but it did little to move him into the mainstream hearing world, since he was essentially isolated from the school's other students.

"Greg could only talk to the other child and the teacher," Carolyn said.

After a year at home, Greg went to college preparatory school for a year, and then to a special school in Rochester, N.Y., for two years.

By that time, he had stopped wearing his hearing aid because he wasn't understanding any of the sound it amplified. He felt totally cut off from anyone who didn't know sign language.

When his parents, Don and Carolyn, moved to Del Webb's Spruce Creek, Greg moved along with them but, like any young person coming of age, he longed for independence.

That longing motivated him to pursue the cochlear implant.

But the implant was just a turn onto a new path, the beginning of a new journey.

Now that he can perceive sound mechanically, Greg still must learn to speak vocally so that hearing people can understand him. He goes to therapy three times a week.

He is also working on reading lips more efficiently, so he can better understand what he is receiving from the implant.

"He may always need sign language for school," Carolyn said.

Still, she is pleased with the progress her son has made so far.

"He can hear birds singing. He can hear water running," she said.

And, for the first time, her son can hear her play the piano.

Completing his education is a major goal once Greg's communication skills improve. He hopes to major in computer information technology at Central Florida Community College.

Because of the rapid changes in technology, he'll again be playing catch-up for a while once he starts school.

After school, he'll face the final hurdle: finding a job that will grant him the independence he craves.

Carolyn wants for him what he wants for himself.

"I'd like to see him finish school," she said, "get the degree he wants (and) get a job."

By Glenda Sanders