It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot
During my high school and college years, I kept in touch with many of my friends from Central Institute for the Deaf. I shared important bonds with several of them. We’d graduated from CID together and gone on to mainstream high schools. It was like being part of a cultural minority together. I valued their friendship and the support system we established.
A few of those friends mentioned that it would be fun to see older deaf role models at an upcoming event in Chicago: the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing convention, scheduled for the summer of 1972. I decided they were right and hitchhiked there from Yellow Springs (I hitchhiked often in those days).
When I arrived and walked into a meeting at the convention, I was thrilled to see so many deaf and hard of hearing people. Many of them were less thrilled with me, or at least with my appearance. With my long hair and backpack, I looked more like a hippie than a serious professional. I’ll never forget the warm welcome I received from Joe Slotnick, a Harvard graduate who had been deaf since the age of three after contracting spinal meningitis. Joe was the secretary of Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (TDI), a national organization advocating accessibility to the world of technology for all deaf and hard of hearing people. Thanks to Joe’s influence, more and more of the attendees became friendly with me. I was eventually invited to “camp” with my sleeping bag in a hotel room shared by four well-known figures in the deaf community, including a physics professor, a publishing house editor, and Bob Nicol, an architect and graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
I was also surprised and thrilled to run into two of my CID mentors, Paul and Sally Taylor. Paul was a chemical engineer at Monsanto in St. Louis. In the late 1960s, he had helped combine Western Union teletypewriters with modems to create telecommunications devices for deaf people, known as TTYs. Paul played a major role in developing the manuals that showed people how to connect teletypewriters and modems. He was also working to create the first telephone relay system that would allow deaf people to call anywhere in the country. Sally supported Paul and his efforts, worked part-time, and devoted her remaining hours to raising their three children.
Paul was very excited about the upcoming debate between Dr. Audrey Simmons-Martin and Dr. McCay Vernon, two prominent deaf educators. I had been unaware of the debate, but Paul kept saying it could be a turning point in the field. The speakers held widely different viewpoints on the communication controversy that had plagued deaf education almost since its inception. Before 1880, most deaf students in the United States and Europe had been taught through the manual method, or sign language. But after 1880, oralism gained dominance and most deaf children learned to speak and lipread to communicate with the hearing world. The rare exceptions were when school officials determined that students lacked the ability to speak or lipread. In that case, they were permitted to learn sign language. In the early 1970s, a growing number of deaf people, like my brother Jonathan, believed that deaf children should be taught sign language rather than the oral method of speaking and lipreading—or at least that they should be given the opportunity to choose.
Although I had never learned sign language, I considered it a beautiful method of communication. Over the years, I had become more aware of the movement toward choice and found myself agreeing with it. At the conference, Audrey Simmons-Martin promoted the oral philosophy while McCay Vernon favored signing. The debate and subsequent discussions left me even more convinced that people should be able to choose the method that worked best for them. Paul Taylor and I recalled a good number of CID students who struggled with speaking and lipreading yet were not allowed to sign. It had to have stunted their language development, emotional development, and social skills. We’d felt sorry for them at the time and now saw how it could have been different.
It was exciting to be in Chicago and sense the spirit of change in the air. That conference was a turning point, as the option of sign language gained increasing favor among educators of deaf and hard of hearing people. Although I agreed with the movement, I did not expect to be part of it. I was still focused on computers, mathematics, and technology.
My thinking was about to change, however.
Dorothy Scott had lined up my final college co-op position for the fall and winter quarters. She described it as “the best co-op job you could ever dream of, the perfect way to culminate your Antioch experience.” And it was a wonderful opportunity—a position working at Stanford under Patrick Suppes, founder of the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS) and famous for his leading role as a proponent of computer-assisted instruction (CAI). The concept of gaining advanced education through computers was one of the hot topics at the time.
At Stanford, I helped develop programs that compared what kind of computer-assisted instruction was most effective for people in different areas, such as mathematics or counseling. The work was challenging and rewarding, and my fellow students and I didn’t mind that we worked long hours. In fact, when we attended what turned out to be a dull New Year’s Eve party, one of us said, “Let’s go to the lab to work,” and that’s just what we did. About half past midnight, the door to the lab opened and Patrick walked in, still wearing his bowtie. He’d been at the same event. “That was the most boring party I’ve ever been to,” he said. Soon we were all at work. We stayed until six or seven in the morning and had far more fun than we’d had at the party.
It was about this time that I began thinking seriously about my life beyond college. Overall, my time at Antioch had been an excellent experience, but it would soon end. Graduate school seemed the logical next step for someone interested in math and computers, and I began filling out applications. But I wasn’t excited about any of the opportunities I was looking at. What, I thought, am I going to do?
I was in my office at Stanford when a young woman poked her head in the doorway. “Excuse me,” she said. “My name is Pat Lashway. I just wanted to say hello.”
Pat was a speech, language, and hearing sciences lecturer from Oregon State University who was visiting the IMSSS. She sat down and we ended up talking for the next two hours. She was easy to converse with and clearly had experience communicating with deaf and hard of hearing people.
One of the topics of discussion was my future. We talked about the debate at the Bell Association conference in Chicago, the growing recognition of the significance of sign language, and what an exciting time it was in the field of deaf education. Near the end of our meeting, Pat said, “Paul, I don’t see you in the picture you’ve described. You don’t belong in statistics and mathematics and technology. Something’s wrong with that picture. We need more people like you involved in deaf education, people who can talk with parents and show them the options as well as teach.”
I was immediately intrigued by the idea. My parents had done so much to advance my education. How nice it would be, I thought, to share from my experience, support other parents of deaf and hard of hearing students, and explain the options they had today.
“Where would I go?” I asked Pat.
“You could get a master’s and PhD,” she said. “You could still do statistics, research, teach, whatever you want.”
After Pat left, I thought, She’s right. I like teaching. I like working with people. I liked my work with statistics and computers but wasn’t sure I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. I’d seen so many people burn out in those fields.
It was highly unusual for me to make snap decisions about major life choices, but this was one of those times. She’s right, I thought again. I’m game.
A large pile of applications to various graduate schools sat on the corner of my desk. I took my hand and slowly slid the pile over the edge. I watched the papers tip and fall into the wastebasket below. The space on my desk where the applications sat was now empty. Just like that, I had cleared away all my old plans.
Now what?
Graduate school still made sense. I talked to my immediate boss at Stanford, Dexter Fletcher, and explained my change of heart. He recommended Stanford, the University of Illinois, and a handful of other colleges. Dexter was ahead of his time in that he strongly believed in the value of interdisciplinary programs. He advocated that all students broaden their scope of study so they would have more to offer society. In my case, Dexter encouraged me to pursue educational psychology and linguistics in addition to traditional deaf education programs.
My first choice was Stanford because I wanted to stay on the West Coast to be closer to my family. Dunbar was teaching in Berkeley, and my parents had been invited to move there to help a church start a program for senior citizens.
I launched into a new round of applications. I would have to wait and see.
In the meantime, I had to finish my final quarter at Antioch. I was thrilled to room in a house with Moss, a friend from my original P-Group, along with three or four others. Every Friday night, Moss invited friends over to the house to play poker. They indulged in beer, potato chips, and other unhealthy snacks. I occasionally joined them but more often went folk dancing with my friends at Red Square.
Much less enjoyable was the division that exploded into conflict between many students and faculty on the one side and the Antioch administration on the other. Many of my friends and fellow students were angry about the Vietnam War, about the prevailing political establishment, about authority in almost any form. At the same time, Antioch was experiencing financial difficulties, in part because of ambitious and expensive programs aimed at low-income black students and at establishing satellite campuses across the country. As a result, the administration began to cut back on promised scholarships. During that last quarter, students and faculty upset about these and other issues—my friends and I called them “the radicals”—launched a strike that effectively shut down the campus. Some confrontations turned violent. A professor who tried to get to his classroom was sprayed with mace. A dean was pelted with eggs. Police were called to campus to tear down a barricade. The administration responded by expelling twenty students and firing seven professors who had taken part in a demonstration.
Although some professors continued to hold classes in their homes, most normal college business was suspended. While we sympathized with some of the views of the radicals, probably two-thirds of the student body was against the strike. We felt it was the wrong way to handle the problems.
The strike destroyed the respectful, supportive spirit that had been so prevalent at Antioch. The bad publicity turned people away from the college and led to a decline in enrollment that lasted for years. For me, it was all depressing and demoralizing.
During a psychology class that last quarter, I met a girl two years younger than me who went by the name of Peaches. She had just returned from a co-op job at the Colorado School for the Deaf. She was expressive and patient, so I asked if she would mouth the professor’s words so I would know what was going on. She agreed and did a wonderful job. At the end of the quarter, I complained to Moss about all the problems on campus and said I wished I was more tuned in to the issues. “I wish,” I said, “that I’d had Peaches to interpret for me earlier.”
“No, no,” Moss said, shaking his head, “you didn’t miss anything. You are one of the sanest people here because you don’t hear the extra noise. Your deafness saved your life.”
I didn’t agree with Moss at the time. I always wanted to know exactly what was happening. But today I believe he may have been right. The constant drone of negative or irrelevant news would have wasted my time and sapped my energy. Sometimes it’s better not to know all the details.
Because of the turmoil, the administration announced at the end of the academic year that all seniors would graduate. Plans for a ceremony were thrown together. I decided to add some levity to a difficult time.
My parents, other family, and friends planned to come to the graduation ceremony. During graduation week, I told them, “The president of the college wants to have a private graduation ceremony with just me and my family and friends early in the morning before the official ceremony.” Everyone who was coming to help me celebrate was excited about this news.
On the morning of the ceremony, we all drove to the Glen Ellen nature preserve. I led the group to a life-size statue of Horace Mann, which towered several feet above us. Mann was an education reformer, the first president of Antioch, and among the first college presidents to hire female faculty paid on an equal basis with their male colleagues, as well as to admit black students. My family and friends were surprised to see that the statue clutched a real, paper diploma, complete with a ribbon, in his right hand.
“Oh, there’s the president,” I said. “And he has my diploma.”
Everyone burst out laughing. Our family often played jokes on each other, and they realized I’d just played a big one. I climbed up to “accept” my diploma and announced, “Horace has just given me some valuable advice: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” This was the college motto.
I had my college degree, but I had no idea what victories awaited me. I was disappointed with the results of my graduate school applications. Stanford accepted me but did not offer a scholarship. In fact, the only institution that seemed excited about me, offering a graduate assistantship and a stipend, was the University of Illinois.
Since I didn’t want to go east, I couldn’t decide what to do. I thought I might find an appealing job instead. I traveled all summer and put off making a choice. I was at my parents’ home a week before classes were scheduled to start at Illinois when my mother asked, “Paul, have you let them know at Illinois that you want to go there?”
“No,” I admitted.
“When is the deadline?” she asked.
“Oh, last month.”
“Last month! What are you going to do? We have no money for you.”
It was time to make up my mind. I decided I would go to Illinois if they would still accept me. I sat nearby in my parents’ kitchen as my mother phoned the University of Illinois and asked if their offer was still available. To her great relief—as well as mine, but mixed with a sense of apprehension—they said yes.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
I was bound for the land of Lincoln.