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[The following article is from the Indianapolis Star, Monday,
July 29, 1985. GK]
Gene Petersen helps others to hear needs of the
deaf
By Kathy Whyde, Star Staff Writer
Gene Petersen's friends know that once he latches on to an idea,
it's difficult to pry him loose. When he sets his mind on a notion,
the conversation follows his agenda; he won't let go until
he's sure his point has been made.
For example:
"People are always referring to 'the deaf,' as if we're a
herd of sheep or something." Petersen talks and uses sign language
at the same time. But his speech is difficult for a hearing stranger
to understand, so an interpreter translates.
"Almost everything that's been written about deaf people has
been from only two perspectives: the success stories and the troubled
people. There is not anything about the ordinary grassroots people.
"Deaf people tend to be like hearing people: Some are great,
some are so-so, some are bastards.
"There are rich people, athletes, people on welfare and unwed
mothers.
"To me, the world is full of deaf people. To you, there aren't
all that many."
The interpreter interrupts. "I think you've made the point,"
he signs and smiles.
At 65, no task seems greater than Petersen's single-minded energy,
whether it's building a cabin in the woods, digging up money for
community services for deaf people or writing a book he's been thinking
about for almost 15 years.
Tentatively titled, Deaf America, Petersen hopes the book
will fill the literary gap between accounts of deaf "superstars"
and accounts of "low-functioning" deaf people. He wants
to travel the country, talking to "everyday deaf people,"
about their lives.
Until now, progress on the book has been slow. Petersen has had
trouble finding the time for writing, what with his duties as director
of deaf services for Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana and
his work for the American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association
and other deaf advocacy organizations.
But his appointment book has been cleared for the next year. He
has been named to the Powrie V. Doctor
Chair of Deaf Studies at Gallaudet College, the country's most
prestigious school for deaf people. He and his wife, Inez, will
move to the school's Washington D.C. campus in mid-August.
The appointment will allow him to work on the book uninterrupted.
Gallaudet will provide him with a salary and traveling expenses
while he gathers material for his book.
The Gallaudet appointment committee was so impressed with Petersen's
project that it picked him over several candidates with doctoral
degrees. No matter that Petersen has yet to complete his undergraduate
studies. With five children to raise, there wasn't much time or
money for him to continue his schooling.
I think the novelty of someone without a doctorate applying for
the chair got their attention," Petersen says.
After that, his experience did the talking. For many years, Petersen
worked with severely handicapped deaf clients at Crossroads Rehabilitation
Center. He was a member of a committee formed to investigate the
need for community services for the adult deaf in Indianapolis,
which led to the establishment of the Indianapolis Community Services
Agency for the Deaf. He studied the need for better mental health
services for the deaf and was involved in efforts to establish a
special unit for the deaf at Central State Hospital.
In 1983, he became president of the American Deafness and Rehabilitation
Association for a two-year term. Over the years, he managed to squeeze
in one or two classes a semester at Butler University.
Colleagues who wrote letters of support for him cited his experience
with and knowledge of the lives of ordinary deaf people. It's a
perspective to which the Gallaudet community may not have had much
exposure, Petersen believes.
Because of his deafness, Petersen will have to employ unusual interview
methods to gather material for his book. "When you're deaf,
you can't look down at your notes while you write," he explains.
"You have to be watching the person's hands."
He plans to videotape his interviews, then go back and transcribe
the tapes. Still, he anticipates problems, because American Sign
Language is its own distint language; an exact English translation
is impossible.
As an added precaution, he plans to have a speaking person translate
the videotaped sign language into a tape recorder, then have a written
transcription made of that tape.
He hopes his book will be useful to people who have "a casual
interest in deafness. They really need this information. They can
mix socially with deaf people. But it will take them a longer time
to learn what their lives are like."
Petersen hopes to have the book finished by December 1986, "before
I'm so old I can't do anything but rock."
Then he'll be back at his desk at Goodwill to continue his crusade
to develop programs for severely handicapped deaf people. He believes
there are now ample educational opportunities for average and higher
functioning deaf people, but that people on the other end of the
spectrum are left out of the picture.
He knows that, the more Goodwill accepts these people who need
help most, the agency's success rate may falter. But he's up to
the challenge. "In vocational rehabilitation, they want successes.
We know we're never going to have a high number of successful closures."
But offering training skills to the truly needy deaf people is
the best way to serve society, he says. "It costs so much money
to keep these people in institutions and on welfare. If we can successfully
rehabilitate only 1 out of 10 of our clients, the state will make
a profit. And our success ratio is 50 percent."
Government cutbacks in funding rehabilitation programs "is
just lousy economics," he says.
"I really want to make that point. Do you understand?"
he signs and smiles.
"I talk and talk and talk about the need for rehabilitative
services. But I don't seem to have made much impact. That's my big
disappointment."
Petersen figures another five good years in him to keep making
his point, to government representatives, to Sertoma clubs, to anyone
who will listen. He doesn't plan to retire until age 70, at the
earliest. "I don't feel like stopping now. I'll keep going
as long as my mind will let me. I can't imagine just staying home
day after day."
[The following interview was conducted by Bob Jacobsen, Supervisor,
Office of Vocational Rehabilitation in the State of Indiana Department
of Human Services. The interview occurred on April 17, 1987, but
was not published until August and December of 1988. The first part
of the interview was published in The Hoosier Beacon, of
the Indiana Rehabilitation Association, Vol. XII, Number 5, August
1988. GK]
Part I. A Deaf American: An Interview with Gene
Petersen
By Bob Jacobsen, M.S., C.R.C., President of IRA
Gene Petersen is an extraordinary person. He is a man of talent,
energy, commitment, words and action. Born in 1920, deaf at age
eight because of illness, he finished school and two successful
careers while not only pursuing his writing but also working to
improve the country for deaf Americans.
Gene is a large man, nearly 6'2" and over 200 pounds. He is
hunched over at the shoulders, with powerful arms and strong hands.
The physical strength is the result of working thirty years as a
printer. With his bald pate, light complexion and piercing blue
eyes, his feelings are easily discernible. When he speaks with excitement,
his face reddens and the arteries in his temples and neck stand
out. With the total communication he uses, oral and sign, the words
are hammered out like a typesetter pounding on lead.
His soon-to-be-published book is an oral history of deaf America,
written in the words of ordinary, grassroot, deaf Americans. This
book will have sociological, anthropological and rehabilitative
significance lasting well into the twenty-first century. It will
be on a par with Terkel's Working and Xinxin and Ye's Chinese
Lives.
Because of his disability, Gene has lived in two worlds. He has
seen both sides: the hearing and the deaf, blue and white collar,
printer and author. Now he wishes to communicate to the hearing
world what he has learned about ordinary deaf folks. Like Eric Hoffer,
the longshoreman/philosopher, Gene became disabled at age eight.
As young men they worked with their hands and backs. As mature adults,
writing became their passion. And like Hoffer, Gene has an undying
belief in the value of work and the triumph of the human spirit.
(It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting
minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter
of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose
its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent
of the majority. (Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition,
p. 29.)
H.B. [Hoosier Beacon] - Tell us about the early years?
G.P. [Gene Petersen] -When I was eight years old, in the summertime,
I got spinal meningitis which left me profoundly deaf. I was pretty
sick and I missed school for about a year. When I got well enough
I went back to the public school, and from that point on I just
read my way through school. Now-a-days they call it "Mainstreaming,"
but I just drifted with the stream. I could never really communicate
with my parents. If my mother wanted to make sure that I understood
her, she would write me a note and stick it on my face. She didn't
trust my lip-reading. If she did, I might be a better lip-reader
now. It was just easier to write it down. Then there would be no
misunderstanding.
That one year at the school for the deaf opened the world
for me. The world of real communication, not just superficial
communication.
H.B. - What was school like when you were young?
G.P. - I just read and figured things out myself. I had no social
life, very little peer interaction. Some, but really nothing like
normal, hearing children do. I went on to my second year of high
school and one teacher talked to my mother and father about sending
me to the school for the deaf. He thought I'd be better off there,
so I accepted it. But I didn't adjust. The other kids in my sophomore
class were all older than me, a lot more mature, and I couldn't
sign at all. But, little by little, I learned to sign and I really
started to enjoy the interaction with other deaf kids--more than
I admitted. At the end of the first year, I told my parents I wanted
to go back to the public school. I think maybe they wanted to hear
that. It made them feel that their son was smart, smart enough to
keep up with the hearing kids.
H.B. - Did your one year at the Utah School for the Deaf change
your life?
G.P. - That one year at the school for the deaf opened the world
for me. The world of real communication, not just superficial communication.
Later I met some deaf people and I started to go around with them.
I wanted to tell you about the time I graduated from high school.
It was in the middle of the Great Depression and we were really
poor. My mother and father didn't go to the graduation. Maybe the
reason was they didn't have good clothes or didn't have the bus
fare; I don't know for sure. They found an old suit, a second-hand
suit. My father was a tailor, and he altered it to fit. They gave
me $5.00. So I went and got my diploma. The other kids went out
to dance or parties or whatever they do. And I walked uptown alone
and I met some of those people that I had remembered from the school
for the deaf. And I had $5.00 so I gave one of the older kids some
money and he went and bought beer for all of us. So we spent my
graduation night playing pool and drinking beer. It was okay--not
normal--it didn't kill me.
H.B. - What kind of work did you do? Did V.R. help?
G.P. - After graduation I got a job on my own as a printer's devil.
I did all the dirty work. Like washing windows, sweeping the floors,
delivering things. And, little by little, I learned the trade. Shortly
after that I got married and became active in the deaf community.
I was elected secretary for the Utah Association for the Deaf. After
I got involved with the deaf community I saw I needed more education.
By then, I had heard about V.R. At the school for the deaf, you
know, I had never heard about it. So I went there and asked for
help to go to the University of Utah. The V.R. counselor asked,
"Why do you want to quit printing?" I said, "I don't
plan to quit printing, but I want to improve myself. Maybe do more
to help deaf people." "Oh no! I think you should stick
with printing." I said, "Yes, I plan to stay in printing."
Well, we went around and around and about the third time I gave
up. I just gave up.
H.B. - How did you get to Crossroads Rehabilitation in Indianapolis?
G.P. - In 1966 there was a V.R. counselor named David Myers. He
was the only counselor for the deaf in Indiana. He was sort of a
coordinator plus a counselor; he covered the whole state. He did
a good job of that. David knew there was a big need for special
programs for lower-functioning deaf people. So he asked them if
they would think about hiring someone who could really communicate
with deaf people, who could act as a counselor. He knew they needed
a degree, but I was recommended by highly-placed people in Washington.
So I was offered the job without an interview and without a visit.
I find it interesting that the deaf community in the U.S.
is like a small or medium-sized town, even though it starts in
Maine and goes to California. The deaf community is very close-knit,
word spreads fast and there is a warm feeling of belonging.
H.B. - You also worked at the Indianapolis Star?
G.P. - Yes, I worked nights as a printer. At that time it was very
easy to work as a sub at the newspaper, you know. Twenty years ago,
if you had an International Typographical Union card, all you had
to do was go up to a newspaper, put your slip in and they would
hire you. There was all the work we wanted. You could travel all
over if you wanted to, and some deaf people did that.
H.B. - Tell us about your soon-to-be-published book.
G.P. - About ten years ago, I began to dream about writing a book
about ordinary deaf people. I had done a series of interviews for
The Deaf American magazine using the usual question and answer
format, then I read Studs Terkel's book, Working, in which
he got a variety of hearing people to talk about their jobs and
life styles with a minimum of questions. I thought that was what
we needed in the area of the deaf. Too many demographic studies
focused on problems and deviance, and the questions they asked deaf
people were designed to show how deaf people were different from
hearing people and highlighted their problems more than their ordinary
life styles.
I hope my book will be well received, and I hope that it will
help people like you, and all of those new people who are thinking
of becoming counselors for the deaf, and psychologists and teachers
to understand the deaf world and culture better.
From September 1985 to August 1986, I had the honor of occupying
the Powrie V. Doctor Chair of Deaf Studies
at Gallaudet University. It was a great year. Inez and I travelled
around the country. We worked as a team from beginning to end. Inez
is one of those people with a God-given talent for making comfortable
friends out of strangers in about ten minutes. She was also my camera-woman.
I find it interesting that the deaf community in the U.S. is like
a small or medium-size town, even though it starts in Maine and
goes to California. The deaf community is very close-knit, word
spreads fast and there is a warm feeling of belonging.
Most of my focus is on the middle-class deaf, but many of those
higher-functioning people are very proud of their grassroots beginnings.
I think the book is a good balance to all of the negatives and all
the studies of deviance in the deaf world. I hope my book will be
well received, and I hope that it will help people like you, and
all of those new people who are thinking of becoming counselors
for the deaf, and psychologists and teachers to understand the deaf
world and culture better. That is my goal.
H.B. - You are a product of a mainstream education. In your view,
what are the pros and cons of mainstreaming for the deaf?
G.P. - If my children had been born deaf, I would not mainstream
them. If my grandchildren happen to be deaf, I would tell my daughters
and sons, "Forget about mainstreaming, put them in residential
schools for the deaf." But some places schools for the deaf
are closing down. Utah is down to about 35 and they are all for
the multiply handicapped. Parents visit the schools with their children
and all those obviously multiply handicapped children don't look
normal. So the parents think mainstreaming is better than that.
The deaf schools need a mixture of smart kids, some average kids
and low-functioning kids. The smart kids will pull up the lower-functioning
kids.
If my children had been born deaf, I would not mainstream
them. If my grandchildren happen to be deaf, I would tell my daughters
and sons, "Forget about mainstreaming, put them into residential
schools for the deaf."
In mainstreaming there is a problem with interpreters. I think
interpreters are wonderful. But many times children up to high school
will look up on the interpreter as the teacher. That is not a healthy
thing. Their interpreter becomes the teacher, not the teacher over
there.
After school these mainstreamed kids go home on the bus. Most have
no communication in their home, no peer interaction. Neighbors don't
sign and they can't talk or read lips. They sit and stare at the
T.V. without understanding or trying to talk to their parents. They
will go home at night and their education stops. Well, that is not
part of rehabilitation. But it makes them what they are when they
get old enough to go to rehab for help. But I know that some do
wonderfully. Some are just fantastic and do really well in mainstream
programs and talk very well. I am really impressed at how well they
can lip-read. It impresses the hell out of me. But not many do that.
The few get all the attention, though.
END OF PART I.
Editor's Note: Part II will contain comments on sign language,
Counselors for the Deaf, and other deaf issues.
Special thanks to Phil Hess, Carl Garner, Carolyn McCutcheon and
Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana. Mr. Petersen was interviewed
on Good Friday, April 17, 1987. On May 27, 1988 Gene retired from
Goodwill Industries.
Gene Petersen has published dozens of articles. He is a former
associate editor of The Deaf American. His professional activities
include: Board Member of Indiana Association of the Deaf; Past-President,
American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association; Mayor's, Governor's,
and Indiana Rehabilitation Service's Advisory Committees on the
deaf and handicapped. Appointed Powrie
V. Doctor Chair of Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University for
1985-86. He has received two Sertoma Service to Mankind Awards.
Part II. From the Bottom of the Barrel to the
Bottom of His Heart: An Interview with Gene Petersen
By Bob Jacobsen, M.S., C.R.C., President of IRA
Helen Keller has written: I am just as deaf as I am blind.
The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more
important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune.
For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus--the sound of
the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps
us in the intellectual company of man.
She has also written: ... I have come to regard hearing as
the key sense. If I could live again I should do much more than
I have for the deaf. (The Quiet Ear: Deafness in Literature,
1987.)
Born in 1920, deaf due to illness at age 8, Gene Petersen has completed
two successful careers, one in printing, the other in rehabilitation.
Now he looks forward to the publication of his first book, Visits
with Deaf Americans. It is Gene's hope that the book will increase
the understanding of the social and cultural influences of deafness
on the individual.
H.B. - Tell us about your family.
G.P. - My first wife, Kay, and I had five children, three boys
and two girls. In 1967, when I came to work at Crossroads Rehabilitation
Center, two daughters stayed in Utah, one boy was away from home
and two teenagers came with us. Today my two daughters work for
a computer company. My oldest son has a Ph.D. He works at the Jet
Propulsion Lab. Another works for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the
other for Pittsburg Testing Lab. All three boys have been on church
missions for the Mormon Church. One went to Sweden, another to Japan
and the other to the Northwest. They are all married now. I have
15 grandchildren. Kay died in 1968.
Inez, my second wife, attended the school for the deaf in North
Carolina. Her first language was ASL (American Sign Language). Inez
has a wonderful talent for making friends. She was a great help
with the interviews for the book.
H.B. - Does it sadden you that none of your children work with
the deaf?
G.P. - Many people assume that if your mother and father are deaf,
you automatically become an interpreter, but it doesn't work that
way. We communicate very comfortably with our children. They grew
up with signing. But interpreting is not their cup of tea. The fact
that they do not work with the deaf does not sadden me. They are
doing fine.
We need to do more to train counselors and to train more deaf
counselors.
H.B. - How important are signing skills for counselors for the
deaf?
G.P. - Deaf people appreciate it when counselors can sign a bit.
Really, it opens doors and I push that all the way. But deaf people
never really feel comfortable with those hearing counselors with
just the basic signing skills. And the counselors are not very comfortable
with their deaf clients. Some hearing rehab counselors for the deaf
will have the basic aptitude to learn to sign well, but the older
you get the harder it is to learn a new language. Also, the sign
language that people learn from classes is not what they see with
the clients.
I'm not saying that deaf people always make better counselors.
There are some mediocre deaf counselors and some wonderful. But
there is no way you are going to know what it means to be deaf and
what it is like in the deaf world and what deaf people are doing
after taking a ten hour class in sign language. I'm really concerned
about that. We need a lot more training. We need more deaf people
in rehabilitation.
But then the grant money was gone, and that good staff started
to wonder about job security.
H.B. - It takes money to train people. It also takes money to provide
quality services to the severely disabled. Was there a time when
more grant money was available for training and programs?
G.P. - Back in the seventies there was money all over. We had already
developed a good fee-supported program for severely handicapped
deaf adults at Crossroads when a large grant was more or less dropped
in our laps. It was about $150,000 a year for three years. With
this extra money we developed an even better program. Our success
rate, working with the most severely disabled deaf clients, attracted
national attention. But then the soft grant money was gone and the
good staff started to wonder about job security. All over the United
States there must have been 20 to 24 programs like that started
up with grant money. It was a wonderful era for rehabilitation of
the deaf. But I believe 80% of the programs went down the drain
after the grant money was gone, while the need is still there. Today,
all the hard money is going to programs for the real smart deaf
kids. Kids who go to Gallaudet University, the National Technical
Institute for the Deaf, etc. For the severely handicapped deaf,
it has gotten to the point where there is no money except the V.R.
fee for services and a few start-up grants. At Gallaudet, four-fifths
of the money is hard Federal money, one-fifth is V.R. tuition and
lodging. Severely handicapped deaf adults need more individual help
and more comprehensive services than those bright young students.
This is hard to provide with just V.R. fees for services. But given
the history of soft money grant programs, I think the way to go
is to negotiate fees for services high enough to cover the extra
expenses and give rehabilitation programs time to do the job right.
Also, preparing these people to live independently in the community
is just as important as vocational training.
H.B. - Tell us about the special program for the deaf mentally
ill patients at Central State Hospital.
G.P. - In 1967, about six months after I came to Indiana, David
Myers made a survey of State psychiatric hospitals and found a sizeable
number of deaf patients who were more or less being "warehoused"
due to lack of appropriate services and treatments. Myers left the
state to continue his education but Alan Parnes, a new rehabilitation
counselor for the deaf took up the campaign and with the help of
Jess Smith, assistant superintendent at the Indiana School for the
Deaf, and seed money from the Lilly Foundation, a program for the
deaf was set up at Central State Hospital. It was very successful.
But the grant money ran out and the superintendents have changed
several times. New people come in and they don't know a damn thing
about deafness and don't understand why the deaf patients need special
services and professional staff who can communicate with them in
their preferred language at their level. The program has become
another "white cross," like the many soft money rehabilitation
programs.
I remember a man who was placed in a State psychiatric hospital
at the insistence of his hearing sister. He wasn't crazy, he wasn't
mentally ill; he just had a communication problem on top of a personality
conflict with his sister, who did all the talking when arranging
commitments. After talking to him, Myers arranged to have him transferred
to Crossroads with housing in the community. He had had so little
contact with other deaf people, in the rural area where the family
lived, that he was overjoyed to have someone to talk to and progressed
very well. We put him in a job and he's still there and still living
independently in the community. Hell, all I did was let him talk
to me. That was all he needed.
Another problem is the stigma of the hospital. There are many deaf
people with mental health problems who would be better off with
out-patient services, but very few out-patient services for the
deaf exist around the state. Existing community mental health centers
outside the Indianapolis area have not met the needs of deaf people.
We need a lot more flexibility than we have today.
...he was overjoyed to have someone to talk to and progressed
very well. We put him in a job, and he's still there and still
living independently in the community.
H.B. - What is the cultural difference between American Sign Language
and Signed English?
G.P. - I am very interested in language. Not much more than 25
years ago, we had speech and we had sign language. Period. But people
began to notice that the sign language the teachers used in the
classroom wasn't the same as the language the kids used on the playgrounds
and in the dorm and deaf adults used in social situations. What
the kids used was what we now call American Sign Language (ASL).
Just as in France, where public schools for the deaf got started,
they used sign language for instruction, but it wasn't the same
as the adult deaf people in Paris used in social situations. They
had French Sign Language and they had Signed French. In American
today, we have ASL and Signed English (or more accurately "Pidgin
Signed English"). The reason for this is because deaf people
feel more comfortable with ASL and hearing people feel more comfortable
with Signed English. There have been many attempts to modify ASL
to make it conform more closely to the grammar of spoken and written
English. ASL, like all living languages, is changing. I feel there
will always be ASL because it's a good language with certain people
in certain situations. Most older deaf people are bilingual, they
switch from ASL to Pidgin Signed English as the situation calls
for it. You can't change ASL into grammatical English; it's impossible.
To put it another way, good English isn't good German and good German
isn't good French, but each is a good language in its own right.
When you try to translate ASL into English, you lose the flavor.
I hope I have made hearing professionals more aware of the
need for more and better services for the deaf people at the bottom
of the barrel.
One more thing. I've read that sign language is the fourth most
used language in the U.S. I think that's a bit exaggerated, but
it is still a very common language and as more and more hearing
people learning basic sign language, they become more and more comfortable
with deaf people and realize that except for the fact we can't hear,
we are not really different.
H.B. - What would you like to be remembered for?
G.P. - I would like to be remembered for helping hearing people
understand that except for the basic physical fact of hearing/not
hearing, deaf people are more like hearing people than they are
different. Deaf culture is based on the need for comfortable social
communication, not on ethnicity, religion or region. The deaf community
has great heterogeneity but remains a warm, friendly place in which
to live. I hope I have made hearing professionals more aware of
the need for more and better services for the deaf people at the
bottom of the barrel.
THE END
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