Jim Goodson is an affable 50. Lean, tanned with hair turning gray at the temples, he likes to wear light tan or cream twill slacks with open collar sport shirts and turquoise bollo ties. He looks like an Arizona-style businessman, which he is. He radiates self-confidence.

Jim was born in a family of high achievers where politics and big business were a way of life. His father was a two-time candidate for governor of Arizona. Jim carries on the family tradition: He's a bundle of energy, a non-stop talker and a natural politician. He and his wife, Joyce, share an office in the front part of his mother's large sprawling home in Phoenix where they have "his" and "hers" computers and a thriving business. He is also chairman of the board of directors for the Valley Center for the Deaf, a community services agency serving deaf adults in the Phoenix area.

We arrived late for the interview after looking for the address on the wrong side of town but Goodson waved aside our apologies, saying he would make it up by working late that night. He obviously spends many nights in the office.

After the interview, Jim showed us his extensive library, which includes many thick, dog-eared and underlined technical manuals used for overhauling airplane and auto engines.

My name is James Goodson. You can call me "Badson" if I'm a bad boy and give you the wrong answers. (Laughs at his little joke.) I'm a native Arizonian, born in Phoenix. I was born deaf after my mother contacted German measles while pregnant. My parents weren't aware that I was deaf until I was two years old, but they had met several deaf people through the YWCA so they knew something about deafness and it was not as hard for them to accept as it is for most hearing parents of deaf children. One deaf woman, Angela Watson, used to play bridge with my parents. They decided to move to Tucson so I'd be able to attend the Arizona School for the Deaf while living at home.

At the time I was in school, they emphasized oral education and my family wanted me to be able to talk. I did learn to talk and read lips and make use of what hearing I had. My mother put more emphasis on speech but my father felt I should also have sign language while I was growing up. I participated in all the extracurricular activities at the ASD and communicated with the other students and counselors in sign language. My school days were happy days.

I guess I was born a mechanic and while on a summer job at the Arizona Highway Department's vehicle maintenance shop, I received training and became a professional mechanic. I had a special knack for fixing cars; my heart was just nuts about them. I restored classical cars like the Cord, Auburn, Model T Ford, Studebaker, Hudson and Frazer. I even worked on high-speed boats.

After I graduated from high school, I worked for a year or so then my uncle Kenneth, my father's brother, suggested that I go to New York City to pick up his brand new Mercedes Benz 300SL. It was my first visit to New York City and I was shocked because it was so different from Arizona. Arizona is very open, but in New York everything is so closed in. I picked up the car and made a side trip to Gallaudet College on the way back. I was very impressed with Gallaudet College. There were so many deaf teachers who were able to teach in sign language. I met Robert Panara, who signed Moby Dick; you know, Captain Ahab, signed like this down the nose. I also met Leon Auerbach, who taught calculus, using sign language for the formulas, which impressed me no end. It was so interesting to talk to them.

After I got back to Arizona, I reconsidered my decision not to go to Gallaudet and went back to the ASD to take a two-month post-graduate course. I passed the Gallaudet entrance exam and entered Gallaudet in the fall of 1957 and stayed until I graduated in '62. I earned a degree in business administration.

Just before I took the Gallaudet exam, my uncle Kenneth was killed in an auto accident in Virginia. I attended the funeral. It was hard on me because he had done so much to help me become self-confident. I was thinking about him while I took the exam and I was determined to live up to his expectations.

After graduation, I got a job with the Arizona Highway Patrol and worked for superintendent Greg Hathaway. I worked there for two years. It was an interesting experience. I was required to take an eight-week training course related to law enforcement, including traffic offenses, sex offenses, drug offenses and other law violations. I had to work so hard, but I learned a lot. I had three major duties: The first was to make monthly reports. The second involved inventory control, counting the police uniforms, the lanyard whistles which hung on the front of the uniforms, Sam Browne belts, etc. The third of my major duties was as a gas vendor. When the highway patrolmen would fill up for gas, they would use something like a credit card. The state had a contract with an oil company and my job was to audit the gas purchases. If they were using too much, let's say more than 20 gallons, then I'd let my supervisor know that they were cheating the state out of money.

I worked there until Ed Tillinghast, the superintendent of the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, offered me a job as boys' counselor and physical education teacher. He wanted me to take Milton Lee's position after he retired. It sounded like a great opportunity and an interesting job. It was, but the pay was so small and I worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. After four years, I decided to quit and become a printer.

It happened that I got an ITU (International Typographical Union) card through the back door, so to speak, so I took advantage of it and went to Kansas City where I worked as a printer for several months. After that I took off to Tulsa and then to Colorado Springs where I met Robert Welch. He was the first deaf ITU teacher and a genius at color separation. He inspired me to learn about color separation and lithography. After going through the training program, I got a job at the W. A. Krueger Press (WAK), which printed the famous Arizona Highways magazine. They also printed Business Week and several other magazines and I became the assistant superintendent and worked there for seven years. I quit because of the pressure on the job. There were some other problems related to work, but I quit mostly because of the pressure.

While I was with WAK, I bought my own private plane, a high-performance Cessna 210 with retractable gear, and kept it for 14 years. I set up my own company with a registered trade name and ran the business as a sideline. I was very busy with aerial photography. I'd take pictures of land for real estate agents and also of people's houses from the plane with special cameras and other photographic equipment. The business didn't last that long because of my communication problems. I lost a lot of money there.

My brother'in-law's father, who is a contractor, also often asked me to carry some of his equipment to work sites by airplane. Sometimes they'd have equipment which would break down and they needed to fix it in a hurry and needed a special part. So I would fly in with a part, fly into a farm road or fly down onto some unpaved road. You know, like when you have to nearly stall for a short landing or takeoff. Oh, I was just crazy about that. I loved that kind of flying.

I also took care of all maintenace work on the plane and would tear down the engine after each 1,600 flying hours, depending on the condition of the engine, and re-assemble it with new parts as needed.

Before I attended Gallaudet College, I was part-owner of a speed boat with twin supercharged V-8 Chevy engines. Boy, that was exciting, but there wasn't any water suitable for high speed boating within 40 miles of Phoenix, so I sold my share. All the nearby lakes were too crowded and it was too hazardous to operate in such waters.

Then I went to work for the Arizona Republic newspaper and stayed there for eight years until my father died in 1980. My brother and sisters felt that since I was familiar with accounting and business administration, I was the right person to manage his estate.

As I got involved with managing the estate, I saw the amount of bookkeeping and the financial reports that had to be done monthly. I hadn't realized there was such a heavy load of work. I thought perhaps a computer would help, so I bought one and fell in love with it. I studied programs every night. Every evening I'd be hooked to the computer. I studied Basic, Fortran, Cobal, Pascal, all the different languages and the different software programs. I tried developing my own programs; I enjoyed that very much. My poor wife became a computer widow until I taught her the basics and pulled her into the business. Now she lives in a computer world and it's hard to get her to stop and eat lunch.

I can talk well and can understand some people on the phone with my hearing aid. It depends on the hearing people. Some businessmen talk fast and I can't understand them, so I use the TDD and the message relay services for the deaf at the Arizona Deafness And Research Association (ADARA) or the Valley Center for the Deaf. For most of my business talks, I use the TDD and the relay services. I can talk with my family on the phone except I really can't talk with my mother because she still signs.

I went to a workshop on sign language in Portland, Oregon, and it was interesting to see the different movies. One film showed the Rochester method; another showed manual English sign language as used by a professor from Gallaudet. Another film showed SEE* sign language and another showed ASL. Well, as far as which is more comfortable for the deaf, we watched the films and it was very clear that ASL was more comfortable and was such a beautiful language; it really had an impact on the deaf audience. The hearing people in attendance felt that they were more comfortable with the Rochester method or the manually coded English signs. But they all felt that the SEE sign language was crazy. Hearing and deaf alike--they felt that SEE should not be encouraged. They felt that ASL was maybe more comfortable for story telling or expressing emotions or moods and that manual English was sort of in between. But no one liked the SEE stuff. The Rochester method was too hard on a lot of people's eyes. I would certainly vote for ASL over the other three methods.

Yes, we travel quite extensively. We like to get away from business and take a break. Two summers ago, we went to Hawaii. We went to all five islands and really enjoyed ourselves. We have two children, a 12-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. I guess we had become so tied up in our new computer business we hadn't been giving them proper attention and when we went to Hawaii, we immediately felt so much closer to the children. I think it's really important to take a break and vacation with your children. Before that, we just didn't seem to be able to communicate very well but on the vacation trip their attitude really changed. It seemed that they loved us more. That came from having a vacation together and being able to give them proper attention, talking to them while we forgot about business.

I'm 49 years old and have been to all the states except Alaska. This summer we'll take the kids to Alaska to celebrate my 50th birthday in the 50th state. We'll go as far as Point Barrow, which is past the Arctic Circle. We'll experience what they call the Midnight Sun; where the sun never sets at night in mid-summer.

I've met a lot of deaf people during business and vacation travel and a lot of hearing people who were really naive about deafness. One incident really hit me hard. I'd like to tell this story:

We went on vacation to the Caribbean Islands and were on the island of Martinique. I needed some cash to tip the waiters, bus boys, room stewards and all of that. (You have to pay for that service before disembarkment.) Well, I figured I would need at least $300 and I thought I'd get an extra $200 and that would run into about $500. So I went to the purser on the boat and told him I needed a cash advance. She said, "I'm sorry, you'll have to go to the island to get it." I told her I was afraid that the bank at [the] island might not honor my request; I would really prefer to get the cash from her. But she said no, the boat was not a loan company or a bank to provide those services and I'd have to go to a real bank. So I got off the boat and went to the bank on the island. I was standing in line and noticed that one of the people in front of me was also on the cruise boat. I saw him use his American Express card and get the money right away. Well, I have pretty good speech but my voice gives me away; people recognize that I'm deaf. When my turn came and I asked for a cash advance on my American Express card, the cashier asked if I was deaf and when I said yes, she got all panicky. She called a supervisor and they were in a shock to see a deaf person asking for a cash advance. They really didn't know what to do with me; they were not too sure they should honor my request. They asked me to move out of the line and they would take me to another bank. Oh, before that happened, the cashier was speaking with the boss and it took them about 15 minutes. They were talking and talking about my case and decided that I had to be referred to another bank, a French bank, some strange name I can't remember. So, anyhow, they escorted me over to the other bank. I met a black woman there. She said, "What can I do for you?" I said, "I need a $500 cash advance." She stared at me and didn't know what to say. So she called some sort of assistant to come over and look at my card. They didn't know what to do. Finally, they got the highest person in the bank who came to meet me and he asked, "Where are your documents?" I showed him my driver's license, which happened to be a chauffeur's license. They thought that was just impossible. Then I showed them my pilot's license. And, again, they said that was incredible. Then I showed them four or five credit cards like Master Card, Visa, Citibank, The Arizona Bank Card, the Valley National Bank Card. They were in shock. They seemed to think that a deaf person shouldn't have all those. It was almost like I shouldn't be having any of those things. So they picked up the phone and made a long distance call to someone in Washington, D.C., and they were just talking away. While they were on the line, I told the black woman that I'm on this cruise boat called the Sun Viking, and suggested, "Why don't you call the purser?" So she called the purser who confirmed I was on the cruise. After making calls to Washington, D.C., and the purser on the boat, they finally gave me the $500 advance. The black woman who wrote out the money orders said that on her island, deaf and handicapped people were the lowest class of people and they were so surprised to meet a deaf person who had that kind of money. She asked me to accept her apologies for making me sit an hour and 45 minutes through all of that checking. Once they gave me my $500, I was so glad to leave. I really wondered about the black deaf people in the Caribbean and the problems they have there. It makes me appreciate how lucky we are to be in America.

I've heard stories about American deaf people going to Europe and trying to rent a car and the Europeans will look at them like they weren't able to do it. They had a hard time getting a car. I really wonder why we are so different. Deaf Americans are the luckiest deaf people in the whole world. I don't think other deaf people have as many opportunities as deaf people here in America. We should really be thankful to the United States.

The deaf community in the United States is changing. Educated deaf people are getting into technology, they are investing their money, not just in IRAs and certificates of deposit, but in stocks and businesses. However, many deaf people don't have the education to understand the business world. They enjoy going to clubs and bars and socializing with people. They seem to enjoy the human contact more. They just put away hours in the bars and clubs, playing cards and drinking and complaining about the membership dues increasing. I'm amazed that they can live that kind of life.

Then you meet deaf people who have set up their own businesses or have climbed the career ladder in large companies and in the professions. The sky's the limit.

But other deaf people are now living on SSI and SSDI. It's so small, but they're afraid to give it up. Really, I think if SSI and SSDI were cut back, deaf people would start to wake up and start thinking about their careers. So many of them have become complacent; they draw their SSI and SSDI and just get by.

Education is the key. Deaf children need both sign language and oral communication. They need to have sign language to understand the courses and develop vocabulary, and speech training to learn to talk. If they can't learn to talk, they can still learn how to read with understanding and express themselves in writing while getting a good education.

I was chairman of the 1979 National Association of the Deaf leadership training program here in Phoenix. After Al Pimental (former NAD executive director) left, I took over and I've been trying to help deaf people in this area become good leaders. I'd like to have more leadership training when I have the time.

It's interesting that my wife was born deaf and grew up with the oral method until her junior and senior years. She complained to her parents that she wasn't learning anything at the oral school and wanted to go to the Arizona School for the Deaf. At the oral school, it was the same old approach to teach the kids how to speak and that was it. They finally let her go, but she wasn't very good with sign language at the ASD; she had a hard time. Then she graduated and went to Gallaudet and stayed for five years. During that time, she became very skilled at sign language and came to realize it was very wrong to limit deaf children to the oral method. She's still bitter about her life as an oral deaf person.

We can both speak and sign but we have our differences. One difference is that I really love music. When I was at Gallaudet, I taught dance; I was nuts about dance. But my wife doesn't care for music. I like symphony music, it seems so beautiful to me, but my wife isn't too crazy about that. I like other things like Broadway musicals. It's odd because I have a 60 db loss and my wife thinks we're about the same db loss. Maybe she doesn't appreciate music because her hearing frequency is different than mine.

*Seeing Exact English

Gail Hyde
Project Coordinator, Web Design