My husband, Albert, had worked at the Colorado Department of Rehabilitation for over a year when his department head called him in.
“You haven’t had an in-service since you started. The law says you have to have one. You’re overdue. It’s at the University of Colorado and it’s called The Deaf Client.”
“I have a full caseload. And I don’t have any Deaf clients.”
“Nobody cares. We don’t get any Deaf clients, anyway. But it’s the law.”
Albert called me from Boulder. “The course is a week-long, and it’s very interesting. They have this language you might find fascinating. There seems to be some conflict between Sign and Lipreading. Deaf people have to be good body language readers.” Back home, he was annoyed. “Here I am, an instant expert, a counselor to the Deaf, and I don’t know a damn thing.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Your boss told you no one would show up.”
“I like that language,” He replied, “They use hand-signs. I think I should learn some so that I can at least make a stab at helping someone if they do show up.”
And show up, they did.
There was a graduate of the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind who had come in, needing a job. It was 1963 or ’64, and none of the local schools allowed ASL. Deaf students in the Denver Public School System actually had their hands tied to prevent them from using what Sign they knew. The administrators, back then, believed ASL to be a series of ugly gestures.
But CSDB in Colorado Springs was a state school where the kids could sign, and a student volunteered to tutor Albert during his lunch hour. Unfortunately, Albert was left-handed, so Sign came harder to him than to others. Also, the young woman who had so generously volunteered used a dialect considered strange among the Deaf in Denver.
He soon realized the radical difference between the oral method and that used in the state school. The oral kids were polite, acquiescent, and numb. The signers were full of fun, fire, and nuttiness. In a word, teenagers. Albert enjoyed his lessons and brought them home to me. Soon, we were signing to one another.
In those days, the only way we could learn ASL was from Deaf clients who were eager to communicate.
All of a sudden, Deaf people began to flood the Rehab program. Soon, ten to twenty Deaf clients were coming in at any one time. They came from all over the state, and some from out of state. We started going to weddings, funerals, and parties. Soon, we were meeting CODAs and learning what that world was like.
And Sarah Laughed is a short story I wrote about that world before In This Sign. A women’s magazine printed the story. When I thanked them for taking my part in the oral vs. Sign controversy, they said they would never have done the story had they known there was a controversy.
I began to have Deaf friends, and to learn how Deaf humor works. I watched heroism and misunderstanding on both sides and decided to write about what I was experiencing. I wanted that title because the Latin for in this sign, conquer was inscribed on the cross.
After the book was published, people began to contact me. One was Doctor McCay Vernon, who was a psychologist working with Deaf people. He had an idea for a film about Deaf children. I told him I didn’t know anything about Deaf children, specifically.
“I can provide the knowledge if you can write the screenplay.” He organized a meeting of fifty parents of Deaf children who spoke of their experiences. We produced the film, and I got a lifetime friendship and mentorship.
Shortly after, I met Juliana Fjeld, who was interested in making In This Sign into a film. We would spend ten years working to make a film that would be easily understood by hearing audiences, without subtitles and every Deaf role played by a Deaf actor. Hallmark made the two-time-Emmy winning Love is Never Silent in 1995.