The final two contestants, Academy Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin and country-music star John Rich, battled for a $250,000 charity donation. Matlin traveled to Africa with Starkey Hearing Foundation to deliver hearing aids to deaf and hard-of-hearing children. For many of those children it was the first time they were able to hear.
Rich traveled to Memphis to visit the patients and families at his charity, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. He performed before a crowd of children stricken with cancer and their worn-down parents. It was incredibly powerful, and a reminder that both Rich and Matlin were not just hard-working and persistent players in a game, but also giving human beings.
Throughout the 2011 season, Matlin and Rich were the two best behaved contestants. Matlin was a straight shooter from the beginning, hard-working and added a measure of balance and reason amid the insanity. The same can be said of Rich, who, with his drawl, has been there to offer an eye roll and droll comment, expressing exactly what viewers were thinking at home.
Marlee Matlin, born in 1965, lost most of her hearing at 18 months old, and was the only hearing impaired child in the family. She didn’t let her disability slow her down in anyway. In 1987, she won an Oscar for her debut performance in "Children of a Lesser God," becoming the youngest women and only deaf actor to win an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Marlee is currently serving as the national spokeswoman for the largest provider of TV Closed Captioning, and has spoken on behalf of "CC" in countries such as Australia, England, France and Italy. She also serves on the boards of a number of charitable organizations, including Very Special Arts, the Starlight Foundation, and other charities that primarily benefit children. As someone who loves children so much, it is only fitting that she and her police officer husband, Kevin have four of their own.
One of Marlee’s most memorable quotes is “The handicap of deafness is not in the ear; it is in the mind.”
