A Voice for Veterans

Lucille B. Beck devotes herself to improving quality of life after traumatic injury.

Lucille B. Beck has been hopping state to state helping the Defense Department establish the National Intrepid Center for Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, which will open in the new Walter Reed National Medical Center in Maryland in 2011. Attending meetings in Denver one day, and in Washington and Florida the following week, she's been one of the driving forces behind the facility's creation. Still, she doesn't think of herself as a workaholic.

"I have managed to enjoy my life. It hasn't been all just work," she laughs, adding that she's a city person who looks forward to evening walks to her favorite restaurants in Washington.

That's not to say her work to provide premium care to veterans is any less satisfying. Beck, in her 50s, is chief consultant for the Veterans Affairs Department's rehabilitation services group in the Office of Patient Care Services and national program director for audiology and speech pathology. She is deeply committed to helping America's wounded veterans make the transition from active duty to civilian life.

In the 1990s, she helped create the distance-learning doctoral program in audiology, a Defense and VA collaboration. Since 2002, she has been overseeing rehabilitation related to traumatic brain injury, blindness, audiology and speech pathology. The job was daunting at first, and that was before the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Everybody says they have high standards, but I was worried: Was I up to the task? Could I do this? Could I learn what I needed to know?" she says.

She got her answer. Since then she has resolutely sought out advances in auditory technology to help veterans suffering from sound-blast trauma. This involves computer programs for digital hearing devices, feedback controllers, even stylish aids that will one-day offer iPod connectivity. But she says background noise is still a big problem for those with hearing loss.

"We're not yet at the point where hearing aids are smart enough to say, 'OK, that's the signal you want to hear and that's the one you don't,' " says Beck. "But we have greatly improved their ability to communicate effectively."

First in her family to graduate from college, Beck, a Maryland native, earned a degree in audiology and speech pathology and later a doctoral degree. She began her career in the 1970s as a research assistant at the University of Maryland, collaborating with VA to develop a better hearing aid. She was president of the American Academy of Audiologists, taught at Gallaudet University and The George Washington University, and soon will receive an honorary doctorate from the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. And if she's anything like her parents, a mother who cared for seven children and a father who was an intelligence officer during World War II, Beck was destined to be a master at juggling many pressing priorities.

She says: "I'm lucky I'm a person who found something that I love to do."