Five Things You Can Do to Help
GL: Good morning, Janis, Michael and members of Avoca School West. My name is Geraldine Lawhorn, my friends call me Jerrie. I enjoy working as an instructor at the Hadley School for the Blind. The Hadley School offers distance education, internationally. I am happy to meet new friends. One of my favorite poems is a sonnet written by Betty Knowles that says:
"Without the warmth of friends, I could not live.
Without the joyous interchange of touch,
of word, of deed, of spirit that they give,
life's other gifts don't matter very much.
The dead possessions of the world's great store
have meaning only as they come and go
from friend to friend in mute symbolic flow
of giving and receiving--nothing more.
A man can live without the greater part
of sustenance or happiness or power,
but sweet communication of the heart,
the mind, the soul is life-blood to the flower.
No greater gift did God to humans give.
Without the warmth of friends, I could not live."
Now, your universal question is: "What is it like to be deaf-blind?"
Isolated.
The first telephone was invented because Alexander Graham Bell was trying to develop a communication device for his wife, who was deaf. Everyone used his telephone to communicate around the world--except persons who were deaf.
The experience differs, depending on how old the person is when it happens. When Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing, she was just over two years old. When you were two years old, you could walk and run. You knew what your mom looked like. Your parents had to chase you all over the place to keep you out of trouble. When the little girl lost her sight and hearing, she was cut off from the rest of the family, isolated. Yet, she remembered some things and figured out ways to substitute with her senses of smell, taste and especially touch. Our tactile sense is the most important sense to life, even if we pay no attention to it. When we feel a mosquito bite the ankle, we slap at it and scratch the spot. If we could not feel anything, the bug would keep gnawing until we were dead. We feel cold in January and put on warmer coats or go in a warm house. But if we could not feel anything, we'd stand out in the cold till we turned into an ice cube.
ASW: What is the most beautiful thing you ever examined by touch?
GL: I was seven years old when my mother and teachers realized I had an eye condition. I was beginning to squint at books out of the corner of my right eye. My mother took me to many eye specialists and clinics. After physical examinations, doctors concluded that a severe case of measles I had had at age five had damaged my eyes and ears. They prescribed eye glasses, and I continued school until I was nine years old in fourth grade. Then my sight was worse and I dropped out of school for three years.
My mom was my best friend. She read books to me. She took me to movies and relayed the stories into my better ear. A neighbor gave piano lessons to all the kids on our block, including me. At home, my mom sat beside me reading the music notes aloud till I memorized the songs. The teacher taught classical music, our friends liked pop music, my two older brothers went for jazz. I tried to play them all.
I also sewed for my many dolls, but mom had to thread the needles. When alone, I listened to the radio close to my ear--both music and drama.
Finally, the right school was found, and I was enrolled in the “Braille and Sight-Saving Room" at Sherwood Elementary School. Introduced to the Braille code, I learned to read and write all over again.
I became totally deaf in my second year at John Marshall High School.
ASW: What was it like [to be deaf-blind]? How did it feel to be deaf and blind?
GL: Isolated. Even in the school's cafeteria crowded with shouting students, I felt alone.
The solution to isolation is communication. First, my mother taught me and our family an old-fashioned two-hand alphabet for deaf people. Some friends at school communicated by writing braille notes to me. Others printed letters in my hand. A deaf woman visited us and taught me the standard one-hand alphabet plus a few signs. Sign language is difficult for me, because I can't follow those flying arms without sight! A pen-pal in “Brailleland” told me about the alphabet glove. This is simply a white or gray cloth glove with the letters of the alphabet printed on the fingers. The glove is easy to carry in my pocket. I have memorized the positions of the painted letters, and when I put on the glove, sighted friends tap the letters to spell words.
ASW: How do you identify your friends?
GL: Well, I can pick up familiar perfumes sometimes. To avoid embarrassing mistakes, however, I let friends identify themselves. Women show me a ring they always wear on a certain finger. Most people start by writing the initials of their names.
Next, I needed to be able to communicate to others clearly. Although I could remember how to talk, when I could no longer hear my own voice, I had a problem controlling it. With the help of speech therapists and drama coaches I learned to control diction, volume and pitch by feeling vibrations in the chest and throat. Voice training included reciting poetry, monologues and one-act plays. I loved it!
Eventually, there came technology. The Tell-a-Touch is a portable machine with a keyboard on one side and one braille cell at the opposite side. You can type conversation to me. The electronic Tele-Braille machine is an attachment to the TTY for persons who are deaf so that deaf-blind people can use the telephone, too. To learn more about various kinds of deaf-blind people and the neat ways they use to communicate with others, see the new fact sheet on website at www.aadb.org.
Now we have many services. There's a deaf-blind program at the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind. We have a social club called "Le COBDA." That means "the club of blind-deaf adults." We use the French article “le” meaning the because both Braille and sign language were introduced in France.
In Glen Ellyn, Illinois there is the Philip Rock Center for Deaf-Blind Children. In Maryland, the American Association of the Deaf-Blind (AADB) serves the hearing and vision impaired population of the USA.
In Winnetka, Illinois, The Hadley School for the Blind teaches a wide variety of courses to over ten thousand visually impaired adults around the wo1rld. The textbooks are provided free in Braille, large print, cassette tape and online. A number of our students are also deaf-blind.
More and more tactile devices can be attached to computers, so that I can communicate, visit with you today via e-mail--and meet new friends. Thank you!
ASW: How do you go through your day without seeing and hearing anything?
GL: I identify everything by touch, things I touch and whatever touches me. Therefore, I have a mental picture of what my apartment "looks" like: furnishings, walls, doors, wind blowing from windows, heat from the stove, Braille magazines and books, devices, key boards, etc. So I work all day. Now that I am older, I have cleaning service every two weeks. The helper also does grocery shopping. Charita [a Support Service Provider (SSP)] visits me once a week to read print mail.
ASW: How did you feel when you first got deaf and blind?
GL: Some of [your] questions might get a different answer every day. We don't always feel sad or frustrated because we are deaf-blind, but because something is preventing us from doing what we want to do. So if a way is worked out to do the thing [we want to do], we are happy, though still deaf and blind. We are so thrilled with technology that enables us to communicate on computers, email, internet, telephone, that we do not feel frustrated about not using old land-phones. Years ago, my Mom made calls for me while I had many pen pals via Braille letters. Then came the "code-com" with an attachment that vibrated and I enjoyed communicating via Morse code. Many sighted friends who had been boy or girl scouts could use Morse code with me long before the Braille phones and relay were introduced. Marching forward, there was no time to feel frustrated.