Home is not where you live but where they understand you.
Christian Morgenstern
In November 2007, I attended a conference in San Francisco and stayed overnight with a family friend. At breakfast that morning, I noticed I wasn’t feeling well. By the time I reached the airport for my flight home, I was a little concerned. My backpack felt heavier than usual. More worrisome was that my heart seemed to beat erratically, occasionally adding an extra beat. I hadn’t experienced anything like it before, which made me think it wasn’t related to the heart valve issue I’d been aware of for years. I got on the plane hoping the problem would go away.
Instead, it got worse. When the plane landed in Phoenix, where I was supposed to connect to another flight, I texted Anne to explain what was happening and then took a taxi to an emergency room. The ER staff admitted me right away and also provided a professional interpreter, at my request. I answered a barrage of questions and was submitted to a host of tests.
Several hours later, with me hooked to a heart monitor and IV machine and oxygen tubes plugged into my nose, a doctor entered my room. He explained that I had an ascending aortic aneurysm—a balloon-like bulge in my aorta, near my heart. It was a dangerous condition. If the bulge was another half centimeter larger, it would warrant immediate surgery. If the aneurysm ruptured, it could easily prove fatal.
I’d dealt with a variety of health issues throughout my life, but this was a huge blow. I was lying in a hospital bed, alone in a strange town, facing my mortality like never before.
Through my interpreter, I called Anne and told her what the doctor had said. It was an emotional conversation. We both realized that my heart was degrading. I had mentally prepared my whole life for the idea that I would eventually need to slow down and be less independent. Now, at age fifty-eight, it appeared that moment had arrived.
Back at home, my doctors and I agreed to postpone surgery for the time being. I was put on medication that reduced the risk of rupture. It also left me with less energy than before. I reluctantly concluded that I had to retire from full-time work.
Richard Ford had retired years before and now Benjamin Cuellar was the dean of the College of Health and Human Services. I met with Dean Cuellar to briefly describe my heart condition and ask if I could take a half-time position. He was less than eager to grant my request. “Paul, I want to retire first,” he said. “Then you can retire. You can’t leave before I do.”
I met with the dean three more times with the same request and received the same result. Finally, in our fifth meeting, I had my interpreter make my request in Spanish to honor the dean’s Mexican heritage. This time he granted it. With more than a little sadness, I ended my full-time teaching career in June 2008.
I was fortunate to have such a good relationship with the dean. I was indebted to him in more ways than one. Three years earlier, he had called me into his office and asked an unexpected question. “Paul, tell me your dream,” he said. “What would you like to do in the remaining years of your career? Something special.”
I replied that I had a few books in mind.
“No, that doesn’t count,” Dean Cuellar said. “What if funds were not a problem, time was not a problem, and you could do anything? Think about it.”
I went home and talked to Anne about it. I had some ideas, but nothing felt quite on the mark. Then one morning about two weeks after my meeting with the dean, I woke up with a new vision in my head. During my years at Fresno State, I had been able to support teachers, parents, interpreters, and other professionals with my knowledge about the latest research and findings in deaf education. But I would not always be there. In addition, the field was changing so fast. It was a great challenge for any one person to keep up with the explosion of information. What was needed, I decided, was an endowment that would fund a permanent, revolving position at the university. It would attract experts on various topics related to deaf and hard of hearing people. The plan called for a different expert to come each year. It would be a way to extend our support on a permanent basis to everyone who needed it.
I would call it the Silent Garden endowment.
When I explained my idea to Dean Cuellar, he was enthusiastic. “That’s great,” he said. “I’ll have you work with a university development officer to start figuring out an endowment. We will raise the money.”
I was excited too, though the feeling was mixed with a sense of trepidation. I had just given myself a new challenge that I knew little about: fund-raising. My initial thoughts on the process were a bit naive. I figured I would invite a few wealthy people to dinner, ask them to make a large gift to the program, and I would be done. In fact, that’s exactly what I tried to do. But when I sent out invitations, everyone turned me down. I realized that my task was going to be a little more involved than I’d originally thought.
Over the new few years, I worked with the Fresno State development office. When I went to a part-time schedule, I continued to teach one class. I missed the opportunity to teach more frequently, but I was also excited about my new challenge. I had much to learn, so I took classes on fund-raising. They were like an advanced course on communication. I should not have been surprised to discover that for successful fund-raising, just as for successful communication, developing strong relationships is vital. That fit perfectly with my philosophy. As I told one university official, “I want our donors to be my friends. I want them to be involved for the duration of the program. I can’t just say, ‘Thank you for the check,’ wave, and leave. That’s not me. I want to keep in touch with our donors, have a relationship and a rapport with them. To me, that’s how development should work.”
I already knew how important relationships were when a sensitive subject needed to be discussed. Several years earlier, for example, the university had hired a new chair for our department. He was a man we all liked. After two years in the position, however, our new chair seemed to be struggling. A few faculty members weren’t pleased with the quality of his work but didn’t know what to do about it. Since I had a good relationship with him, I decided to take a bold step. I invited the chair to coffee on a Saturday morning. With the help of a professional interpreter, we discussed a number of things. Then I asked him, “How do you feel about being chair?”
“I don’t enjoy it at all,” he admitted. “But I feel stuck. The reason I moved out here was to be chair of the department.”
“Would you rather be just a member of the faculty?” I asked.
“Yes, very much so.”
I encouraged him to share his feelings with the faculty. I knew that they respected him and was sure they would welcome him as another member of the team. I told him he didn’t need to feel obligated to continue as chair and that the rest of the faculty would understand. Eventually, that’s just what he did. The situation was resolved without conflict in a way that made everyone happy. But I would not have risked talking with the chair, and he would not have risked sharing his true feelings, if we had not already had a good rapport.
The more I learned about fund-raising, the more I believed in a relationship-first philosophy. Even so, I was sometimes impatient. At one point I shared my frustration with Peter Smits, the university’s vice president for advancement. I told him that I felt I was making little progress. No one had yet made a million-dollar gift to the endowment. Peter said that on average, it took six years to develop a relationship that could lead to a million-dollar gift. That made me feel better. I asked if I should change my approach at all.
“No,” he said, “don’t change a thing. Stay persistent and you’ll be fine. Just keep going and be yourself.”
That was the advice I needed. Thanks to a little persistence and the help, support, and generosity of a wide array of friends, the Silent Garden program now includes the Robert Duncan Nicol Silent Garden Endowed Chair, the Joseph S. Slotnick Distinguished Professorship, the Silent Garden Educational Fund, the Silent Garden Scholars, and Scarlett’s Park, which serves deaf and hard of hearing children and youth with special needs. The Silent Garden has grown into a rich and bountiful educational program touching the lives of countless deaf and hard of hearing children, youth, and adults in the region and throughout the state. The varied branches of the program offer unique resources and training opportunities for families, students, and professionals in deaf education and sign language interpreting with the common goal of allowing everyone, regardless of needs or abilities, to grow and thrive. I was thrilled when my old friend, Dr. Alan Hurwitz, delivered the first Silent Garden Lecture on campus in 2012.
One of Paul’s classes with the Deaf Education faculty and students.
Many professionals in the field of deaf education now consider the Silent Garden a model for the rest of the nation. Today, I continue my work to support and raise funds for the program. It is tremendously rewarding.
As I look back on my career, I’m gratified to see how much the deaf education program has grown at Fresno State. By 2008, when I retired from full-time teaching, we had nearly twice as many faculty and four times the number of part-time lecturers. In addition, the number of undergraduate students had grown significantly, and hundreds more took American Sign Language and other classes to fulfill their General Education requirements. We had made so much progress.
In addition to my strategic approach to communication, I realized I was different from some of my colleagues in another way. Many of my fellow faculty members moved from college to college. They advanced their careers by taking more prestigious teaching, research, and/or administrative positions every few years at another institution. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but it wasn’t me. Over the years, I had gotten to know so many of my colleagues in other departments across the university. Sometimes that was through my work on committees, sometimes through connections with students who took our deaf studies classes, and sometimes through simply getting out of my office and exploring what was happening on campus. I realized that developing those deep relationships was very important to me. What began as a survival skill had turned into something more, something I’d been doing and relishing all my life.
I couldn’t imagine leaving the university after working so hard to build up our program and those friendships. As a younger person, I had appreciated the chance to travel often and have experiences with other people, countries, and cultures. Despite my early struggles at the university, Fresno State had become my home. I had helped create an environment where I felt connected and where I had a meaningful, lasting impact on the lives of students and families with deaf and hard of hearing children.
The university had become more than my workplace. It was the place that I belonged.
I was truly blessed.