Children shouldn’t have to sacrifice so that you can have the life you want. You make sacrifices so your children can have the life that they deserve.
Ritu Ghatourey
MY STORY begins eleven years before I entered the world. My brother Jonathan Herr Ogden was born into a loving family on February 8, 1938. Our father, Dunbar Ogden, Jr., was the minister of a Presbyterian church in Portsmouth, Ohio. Our mother, Dorothy Coblentz Ogden, stayed at home to raise our two older brothers, Dunbar (born 1935) and David (born 1936).
My mother was musically inclined. She graduated from the Conservatory School of Music, affiliated with the University of Cincinnati. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in music, with high honors, even though it was quite unusual for a woman to attend and graduate from college in the early 1930s. After college and before marrying my father, she taught high school music. In our family’s early years, when Dunbar and David took music lessons, my mother entertained the idea of raising a family orchestra. While Jonathan was on the way, she dreamed about playing the piano while each of her three children played other musical instruments along with her.
When Jonathan was born, however, he didn’t seem very strong. He didn’t sit up when he should have been able to. My parents attributed this weakness to the fact that he arrived so soon after his brothers. But as time went on, they noticed he was not picking up sounds as he should. One day my mother observed that whenever Jonathan saw her he threw his arms up, indicating he wanted to be picked up. But when his face was turned away, he didn’t respond to her even when she called him. She was a few feet behind him and called and called. There was no reaction. But when she came within his line of vision, he dropped everything and extended his arms toward her.
In the late 1930s, there was almost no accurate information on deafness or any special public services for parents of deaf children. The fact that Jonathan was deaf eluded my parents until he was about three. During the long, emotional process of determining why Jonathan seemed to have hearing and learning difficulties, one doctor declared that Jonathan was mentally retarded. It was a difficult diagnosis for my parents to shake off, but finally another doctor ruled it out.
My father’s younger brother, Fred, lived in Boston and was interning to become an ear, nose, and throat doctor. He was able to get the family in touch with one of the leading specialists in the United States. There in Boston, after many tests, the doctor told my parents with finality that Jonathan was profoundly deaf. He said that it was nerve deafness for which there was no cure and that they should not waste their time searching for one. The doctor then told them something that would positively influence, for life, their treatment of Jonathan and me. He said that the best thing they could do for Jonathan was to give him the finest education possible, to prepare him to live a self-sufficient and independent life.
The truth sank slowly into my parents’ minds. It took them a long while to get over the shocks they had experienced in their journey from doctor to doctor. It was especially tough for my father, a church pastor. He was a conceptualizer, the kind of person who organized things. He constructed frameworks within which things were to be done. It was his attempt to make everything in life logical. He had little tolerance for surprises. At first, my father couldn’t cope with the idea that deafness fit somewhere into his family’s life and into life in general.
The adjustment was a little easier for my mother. She was a balanced, even-tempered, pragmatic person who was rarely flustered or upset. She was also selfless and kind, able to fit into nearly any situation. Rather than be nervous about new experiences, my mother was at peace. A large family of males felt natural to her, since she’d grown up with an older brother and played a major part in bringing up her two younger brothers. She knew, however, that raising a deaf child meant adapting to significant changes.
During Jonathan’s early years, my parents talked to several doctors about our family history. Since there was no serious childhood illness that would have affected Jonathan’s hearing, his deafness was considered a fluke. The only explanation the doctors could give my parents was that it was a “freak of nature.” The example they used was that when ten acorns were planted, nine might grow into perfect oak trees while one developed poorly.
The final diagnosis from the Boston ear specialist came as a terrible blow to my parents. Yet they finally accepted his diagnosis and his advice. Soon they began the slow collection of information and skills they would need to raise and educate a profoundly deaf child.
Jonathan was born without a sense of balance, just as I would be eleven years later. The nerves having to do with hearing are also connected to those having to do with one’s equilibrium. It took both of us a long time to master the skill of walking unaided and confidently. After Jonathan fell and cut himself several times when learning to walk, my parents got a harness for him. The harness was equipped with a long cord. Every time Jonathan stumbled, they pulled up on the cord to keep him from falling flat on his face. My parents’ experiences with Jonathan and the harness saved me from falls when I began learning to walk. In many ways, I was spared scars that Jonathan had to suffer.
With Jonathan and then again with me, my parents learned how important it was to take us out on walks. These frequent exercises gave us an increasing mastery over our imbalance. We learned to walk by eye adjustment—that is, by looking at the horizon and adjusting accordingly. If I were put in a completely dark room, I would not know which way was up and which was down. My eyes would be unable to find the horizon on which I rely for balance.
Almost from the beginning of Jonathan’s life, Mother began to devote many hours each day to teaching him to lipread. She had very little professional knowledge of what she was doing and was not always sure he understood what she said, but she kept trying. At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that the best way for deaf children to communicate was through speech and lipreading. Sign language had yet to earn its place among educators as a respected and viable alternative.
One day Jonathan sat on the floor in the bedroom. My mother knew he loved to take a bath and play in the tub filled with little toys. She turned to him, caught his eye, and asked, “Jonathan, do you want to take a bath?”
Jonathan jumped up, ran to the bathroom, turned on the faucets, and started to undress. A huge smile lit my mother’s face. It was her first communication breakthrough with Jonathan. She now had the wonderful satisfaction of knowing that he had lipread and understood her. That small moment of victory made everything she had done up to that point worthwhile. It encouraged her to keep going.
My mother had many techniques for teaching language to Jonathan. For instance, she cut out pictures, pasted them on cardboard, and wrote the names of the objects on the bottom. She taped labels to pieces of furniture and other practical objects—all with the idea of stimulating language and communication in Jonathan. She practiced with him by asking him to bring things to her so that he had to lipread her and know what she said. She worked on numbers and was always printing something for him on cards she made from the cardboard inside dress shirts that came from the dry cleaners.
Years later, when I was about a year old, a family friend mentioned correspondence courses for parents on teaching and raising deaf children, available through the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles. John Tracy was the deaf son of Spencer Tracy, the actor, and his wife, Louise. My mother soon started the courses and received weekly letters, but by then there was little she hadn’t already learned. The correspondence did, however, show my mother that all the things she had been doing for Jonathan were indeed recommended, and this gave her much-needed confidence.
My mother had no firsthand help of any kind in teaching Jonathan. She learned from different professionals, teachers, and friends but mostly by trial and error. Since there were no educational materials to help her with Jonathan, she created them herself. She felt that teaching him to lipread was the most important thing she could do for him. She had to give him language and a means to communicate.