Sign interpreter Virginia Moore is cancer-free and returning to work with Gov. Beshear

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Two months after being diagnosed with cancer, Kentucky's most visible sign language interpreter is back on the job.

Virginia Moore had been signing Gov. Andy Beshear's daily COVID-19 news conferences when the pandemic began. But she took a break after going public with her battle with uterine cancer in September.

Several weeks after the announcement, Moore appeared on video at Beshear's news conference to say that she is cancer-free. Now Gov. Beshear said in a Tweet that she will be back on the job in his Monday briefing.

The Louisville native says doctors at U of L Health's James Graham Brown Cancer Center were able to remove all of the cancer and will monitor her health for the next five years to make sure it doesn't return. She urged people across the commonwealth to be proactive in getting mammograms and women to get pap smears.

Moore has literally become the governor's left-hand woman during the coronavirus crisis, using her signing skills to communicate Beshear's message to more than 700,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the commonwealth.

Moore became a constant presence at Beshear's coronavirus updates, standing at a socially distant six-feet away.

"This is the first time the deaf and hard-of-hearing community has had complete access to what the governor has to say and emergency information that needs to go to them," she said.

Moore is a Louisville native and executive director of the Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. She said signing is really her first language. "I have a large deaf family," she said. "Both my parents are deaf."

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