The experiences of a Deaf child in the '30s and '40s was very different from today in a few different ways. I can't speak to how Deaf children fare nowadays because there are no other Deaf members in our family anymore. This, though, is what it was like then.
DAD
My dad was born in 1929 to Irish immigrants from County Sligo. He used to think that he was the 5th child out of 6 but in middle age, he learned that there had been another sibling before he was born. He was shocked, especially that no one had told him. I think deaf members of the family don't get to learn about a lot of family secrets. It's very easy to whisper and a little more troublesome to write it out or act it out (if the family doesn't sign).
My Irish grandparents came to this country sometime before WWI. My knowledge of family history on my dad's side is very sketchy but a lot of details have become clear thanks to my cousin Joanne’s research for Ancestry. My grandparents both helped their siblings come to NY once they’d become established here. Grandma Molly worked first as a housemaid. My grandfather spent many of his growing years near the shore and once here, I’m not sure how he was employed.
When I knew my grandfather, he was already blind and there are varying stories about how that happened. My dad believed it was because his father looked at the sun during an eclipse. My mother guessed he’d had a bottle of rubbing alcohol during Prohibition when he couldn’t get a drink elsewhere. My Aunt Bea, Dad’s sister, said no to both, he had glaucoma. And Joanne said from her records it seems he got bad hooch (not rubbing alcohol) during Prohibition.
My dad wasn’t sure why he was deaf. He remembered being told that he had an operation and the doctor cut through a nerve in his neck. That can't be but I'm guessing it must have been a mastoidectomy gone wrong. I'm sure my grandparents didn't have much in the way of money and good medical care for the poor in the Depression was probably almost non-existent.
My dad's family made up home signs to communicate with him. They tried to include him as much as was possible, which is a lot more than other hearing families of the time did with their deaf members. When he was old enough, he was sent out of the city to the state supported school for the deaf in White Plains, NY. There, he got involved in drama, football, and even the band! He didn't grow up feeling ashamed to be deaf or to use sign language. That's a good thing.
He didn't have a great life though. He never wanted to talk about his childhood. My mother told me there was a lot of drinking and violence going on around him, in his own family and in the neighborhood. I think he just wanted to forget about it. Anytime I asked him about it, he'd just say it was all over and in the past.
DAD DOESN’T TALK ABOUT IT
I don't know if all dads keep things to themselves but mine did. I know a few basic facts about his childhood but very little else. My mother says he's been through some really rough times but I could never get him to open up about it. I only asked once or twice. My dad said “I don't want to talk about it, too many bad memories and that was that.”
My dad's next oldest brother, Thomas, was just over a year older. The two brothers used to go just about everywhere together, especially to the movies. My uncle would make motions like he was using one of those big old fashioned film cameras and my dad would immediately understand.
They lived in Harlem and then in the Bronx when they were kids, in the 1930s. My mom said once there was a driveby shooting with gangsters. Uncle Thomas heard the car coming, grabbed my father and pushed him down into the entrance of a candy store. Mom said that dad could hear the pow pow pow sounds from the gun. Neither of them were hurt. I don't know if that story is true because, by the time Mom told me, I'd learned it was useless to ask my dad anything about his growing years.
Mom tells me that the oldest brother, John, and my grandfather both had bad drinking problems and that they fought tooth and nail almost all the time. That has to be rough on a kid, especially when you can't hear and you don't know why there's all this violence.
I can remember my dad fighting with Uncle John and it upset me very much. That particular uncle was my favorite. I didn't realize he had a problem with alcohol. All I knew was that he made up a song just for me, would take my brother and me walking to the store, and just generally was a lot of fun to be around. I think they fought over the drinking and the fact that my mother's family didn't like his toughness...Dad didn't talk about it.
I remember one big blow-out between my parents and my uncle. He was to babysit my brother and me while my parents went to the movies. When they got home, they found him passed out on the sofa. His cigarette had fallen out of his hand and was smoldering. My parents were furious. They felt my uncle put our lives in danger. There could’ve been a fire.
MOM
My mom was a full term baby but she was so tiny, she could fit into the palm of a neighbor's hand. Mrs. Clock, who was my grandmother's close friend for years and years, often liked to tell the story of how she could hold my newborn mom is just one hand. Babies born in 1930 were just tinier than they are now, that's for sure!
My mom was the youngest of six, four brothers and two sisters -- just like my dad's family. In his family, the two girls came first and then the four boys. In my mom's family, it was the other way around. My mom and her sister were the two youngest -- and the only deaf members of the family.
When my grandma married my grandfather, she didn't know there was a history of deafness in his family. I read in her diary that if she'd known, she wouldn't have married him. She deeply grieved the fact that both her daughters were deaf. My aunt was born deaf but my mom can remember listening to the radio and dancing to the music. She lost the rest of her hearing before she was 4. The youngest of the 4 brothers became his sisters' interpreter (I called "Uncle Bone Squisher" because of his tight hugs) but eventually they had to be sent away to school.
The family wasn't wealthy by any means but I guess they were as refined as they could be, thanks to my grandmother. Her family had been in the U.S. since the Revolutionary War -- well, even before then in one branch of the family. That member of the family was smuggled out of France in an empty wine cask by his two brothers. The young man was a Protestant in Huguenot France and his brothers wanted to save his life. Descendants of his fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and my great-grandfather was a light housekeeper. I always thought that was so cool.
My grandfather immigrated from Norway sometime before WWI. I have a picture of my grandparents when they were very young, posing on the beach at Coney Island. I can't imagine how it was my grandmother fell in love with him but ... something like that must have happened. He was a stern, cold man that scared me. I didn't like to be near him.
Although he was never violent with me, I must have sensed something that made me uneasy. After my grandmother died, I found her diary and read it. My grandfather used to beat his family and I felt sick to my stomach at the description of him pounding my mother's head against the wall. My grandfather would attack grandma and my uncles would jump him to stop it ... it sounds awful.
My mother and my aunt were sent to Lexington School for the Deaf. At that time, the school followed the oral method. It meant that the deaf children were not allowed to use their hands and were forced to speak and lipread only. Their teaching methods and the advice they gave my mom's family probably stigmatized the girls and messed up their thinking for almost a lifetime.
LEXINGTON
I know a little bit more about Mom's education and childhood because she was more willingly to talk about her experiences with me. Some of the stories she told me are just awful but I'm glad she shared them.
She and her older sister were sent to Lexington School for the Deaf when she was around kindergarten age. I'm thinking that would be the mid 1930s. Look magazine did a spread on Lexington and took pictures of students trying to learn speech. There were a couple of pictures of my mom, a beautiful platinum blonde child with her hands on some kind of instrument that vibrated. There was another picture of her with headphones over her ears.
I thought it was pretty cool that my mom and aunt would be in a magazine like Look and it looked like they were having fun -- but I found out that it wasn't fun and games. It was very boring and tedious for mom. Hour after hour, day after day she had to put her hands and fingers on the throats and lips of hearing teachers to try and learn how to make sounds. Day after day and hour after hour, she had to practice saying the same word over and over until she got it right.
Ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball.
Definitely not fun!
Why would someone subject a child to that kind of torture? It all has to do with how hearing educators thought deaf kids should be taught.
Some of the earliest schools for the deaf recognized the importance of sign language. It was so much easier to teach the kids -- it makes sense, right? And these kids would become literate as they grew up and some became teachers themselves -- wonderful role models! A deaf community and culture grew -- kind of like when immigrants arrived from Ireland and Germany and Eastern Europe. The immigrants settled into neighborhoods, had a common language and culture and mores. It's the same with the deaf community. At the same time, the communities interact with the larger population. No big deal right?
Lexington School came into existence well over 100 years ago. It was in New York City and has relocated since my mom went there. Unlike the earliest schools, Lexington didn't use sign language for instruction. By then, there was a new theory of education, called oralism, and it was strongly supported by Alexander Graham Bell, whose wife & mother were deaf or hard of hearing. The idea was that using sign language would prevent a deaf child from learning how to speak. That would be a horrible thing because, after all, most of the world is hearing.
That's why my mom wasn't allowed to learn sign language and that's why she had to sit for hours repeating sounds and words that made no sense to her. Not only was she not allowed to sign, she also wasn't allowed to gesture -- even naturally, like to point at something.
Mom told me that she was sitting at the dinner table and wanted some butter. Everyone's faces were turned away as the kids were forced to mouth words to each other. She reached out to touch her neighbor's shoulder so that she could get her attention -- and the counselor smacked her for it. Mom learned it was wrong to gesture like that ... what she was supposed to do was nod her head up and down until she got someone's attention and then ask for what she wanted. I would like to know what the difference is between jigging up and down like a bobble head doll and tapping someone on the shoulder. I guess the difference was that the hands were just verboten.
The girls (Lexington was for girls only after one of the primary ages -- the boys were sent to another school) learned that using their hands to communicate was dirty and shameful and not to be done in public. Mom tells me that she and her sister used to go to the bathroom to "talk" (sign) and that they had to hurry so they wouldn't be caught. They weren't the only kids to do that, either. The girls learned their natural language from each other in the small lavatories. It was the Big Secret.
The counselors and teachers were always preaching to my grandmother and family that they absolutely should not sign, not ever ever and they should immediately prevent the girls from using their hands. Grandma & family got warned: if you let the girls use their hands, they will never learn to speak. They will never be able to get along in the hearing world.
Since those days, Lexington's changed. Now they use total communication -- sign language and lip reading/speech reading skills. They didn't change soon enough for my mom and aunt. To the end of her life, my mother was not comfortable signing in public. At my father’s memorial service, she chose to use her voice to speak instead of signing. She never was comfortable signing with me, too, and that was sad.
MR & MRS SPENCER TRACY
Speaking of fame, though, my mom had an encounter with a "famous" hearing person when she was at school...sort of.
The actor Spencer Tracy and his wife had a deaf son. This was news to me when Mom told me the story. Wow, someone I'd heard of and seen in the movies had a deaf kid! Later, I found out that Lon Chaney Senior’s parents were Deaf—and he was a Coda like me. That must have been so cool, so exciting to have the Tracys at Mom’s school.
Mom shrugged and looked annoyed.
I asked, did you see the son? How did they communicate with him?
They talked, Mom answered. That's why she was annoyed. The Tracys very much supported the oral method of communication -- lipreading and speech training. No sign language, bad bad signs! They didn't help us, Mom explained.
How painful to feel betrayed by “Father Flanagan” played by Spencer Tracy in Boys Town. Father Flanagan was the champion of less fortunate children. Mom, my aunt and the other girls at the school hoped that somehow he and Mrs. Tracy would save them from repressive teaching tactics but were sorely disappointed.
From the stories she's told me, Mom didn't take any sh*t from anyone when she was younger. She used to stick up for her sister (older by 2 years) all the time at school. I don't mean that she was aggressive. She just was much more assertive then. She told me she quit school before she was 16. She just told Grandma something to the effect of -- I'm not going back there. She was sick and tired of saying "ball ball ball" every day. She wasn't learning anything and why go back? She wanted to go and get a job.
In those days, deaf women were mainly seamstresses and key punch operators. The men were machinists and printers. My mom got a job as a key punch operator. She could have been an artist if that had been a possibility then. She had a very keen eye and drew some beautiful portraits with charcoal and also with light pastels.
She was very popular with the boys and dated frequently -- even hearing boys. That surprised me. "How did you communicate?" I asked her. Her speech was okay, I mean, I could understand her. Most hearing people could not.
She told me she'd just talk and do her best to lipread.
As a kid, I thought it was pretty brave of her to go out with hearing boys. What if the boy made fun of her behind her back? She'd never know. What if he spread gossip about her with his hearing friends? She wouldn't know.
Mom went on dates with these boys for the experience of going out. When she was a teenager, "going steady" was rare. Girls and boys went out in groups and didn't date exclusively. She might go out with 4 different boys on Fridays during the month.
"This is how you get to know what people are like," she explained to me.
Mom was feisty enough that the boys she dated never tried anything funny with her.
I don't know if she stood up to her own dad. That's been a difficult subject to broach. I know from reading my grandmother's diary that my grandfather was physically abusive to his family. He beat my grandmother and he'd get into fights with his sons when they came to their mother's defense. My mom told me that he'd beat her head against the wall. I wanted to know why he would do something so mean but I could tell how painful it was for her to talk about and she probably didn't know why anyway.
She dated deaf boys too and met my dad one of two ways: one story is that my Aunt Bea (Dad’s older sister) saw her on a train. They both got off the same stop and went to the NY State School for the Deaf, where Dad had attended. There was some kind of rally going there and Aunt Bea was going to support Dad. Aunt Bea persuaded Dad to ask her out, telling him: she could be “the one”.
Second way: they were on a blind date...not that he was her date. She was supposed to go on a double date with her blind date and my dad was going along with his date. Afterwards, my parents both went to the train station together. My dad was going in one direction, to the Bronx, and my mom in the other, to Long Island. He decided to see her home safely and then go on home himself. The rest as they say is history.
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