Joe Weber is the supervisor-coordinator for the southwest Regional Service Center for Hearing Impaired People (Deaf Services Division, Department of Human Services) in Mankato, a medium-sized town about 75 miles south of Minneapolis. His wife is deaf as is one of their three children. He carries his wiry frame with a slight limp, the result of a football injury while in college, and it is easy to imagine him enthusiastically joining a neighborhood pickup football game. He lost his hearing at age 21 and in recent years has been a regular contributor to the NAD Broadcaster. An easygoing philosopher, Joe accepts his hearing loss with remarkable equanimity. He customarily uses sign and speech simultaneously and this narrative is based on a transcription from the audio part of a video tape.

I grew up in Ohio and I guess you would say I grew up normally. After high school, I went to college for two years at a branch of Ohio State University in my home town. It was a bit like a community college but was affiliated with a larger college. I went there for two years and really didn't know why I was going to college other than to get a college education. What kind of work I wanted to do, I didn't know.

So I decided I wanted to join the Army. Vietnam was happening at that time and I wanted to see what it was like. At first, I wanted to be a helicopter pilot. I found I had to go to a base in Columbus, which is about two hours from my home town. I had to get there at seven in the morning because that was the only time the Army used it for physical examinations. I tried two times to get there at seven; both times something happened and I couldn't get there, so I just gave up and went to the recruiting sergeant and said sign me up for two years because I was planning to go anyway.

I was sent to Vietnam, but I was there for only about three months then I got malaria and had to go to the hospital. I didn't react right to the medication (kanamycin) which apparently destroyed the nerves in my ears and left me with permanent and total deafness. My audiogram, I think, starts at 90; at 90 I raise my hand and after that it is 110 all the way across, so, really, I hear nothing. They tried different hearing aids but none of them really worked.

Later, while I was at Walter Reed Hospital, I got speech therapy and lipreading lessons. I had no idea what kind of work I could do and the only deaf people I'd really seen up until that time were the peddlers selling ABC cards and I couldn't see myself doing that for a living. I thought I would end up being a janitor or unskilled worker; really, I had no idea what I could do. The Veterans' Administration counselors didn't know much about deafness, either, but the people at Walter Reed Speech and Hearing Center suggested that I go to Gallaudet. Like I said, I had two years of college and felt I needed more education if I were going to work after losing my hearing. I was a little nervous because I didn't know much about sign language or deafness and the only deaf people I'd met were peddlers. Also, I was still physically weak from the malaria. But I felt, well, I'll try it because it seemed easier to use sign language than to go with lipreading.

I got out of the Army in March, 1971, and in June of 1971, I went to Gallaudet. Before going to Gallaudet, however, I took one course at the college near my home. There was no special help, well, not really any special help, but people did give me notes and things like that. There it became obvious I wasn't going to go to college and lipread my way through. It was an impossibility. I would understand one word out of a hundred maybe, and the teacher didn't stand in one place and didn't face me all the time.

Anyway, in June of 1971, I arrived at Gallaudet and again it was a bit of a shock. But during the summer, most of the regular students were home for vacation and a lot of the new students were like me. They'd either gone to public schools or they didn't sign, so it wasn't too bad.

While I was there, I met my wife, Sue Storts. She had already finished her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Gallaudet. She had lost her hearing when she was about five years old and had gone to the Minneapolis public schools' special program for the hearing impaired. She didn't know sign until she went to Gallaudet. At the time I met her, she was doing student teaching. We got married in December of 1972 which, in a way, was pretty fast considering I had just had a large change in life, losing my hearing, then going to Gallaudet.

With a B.A. in psychology, I decided I wanted to go to graduate school. I heard about a project with chimpanzees in Nevada. They would pay your way through school for a masters or a Ph.D. if you would work with the project. It sounded interesting so I applied, was accepted and went to Reno and worked there for one year.

I'm not going to say a lot about that program, but it was an interesting experience working with the chimps. You learn they are really intelligent and sometimes act almost like kids. Now that I have kids and can look back and compare the way the chimps acted with the way my kids act, there are a lot of similarities. The chimps would get in trouble and then go and hide or they would sneak around watching you and then go get something. Most people think the chimps sit there and talk with you. No. They could maybe tell you they were hungry or wanted to go play or something like that, and they often made many mistakes before they got the right sign. But, in a sense, I think the project was successful.

After becoming dissatisfied with that program, I heard about a program in Oregon for counseling with deaf people. My wife was in California and met Carolynn Whitcher, a faculty member in the Counselor Training Program at the Oregon College of Education, who told her about the program. It sounded good because counseling is close enough to psychology, and so I decided to apply. I was accepted and went through the program and got my master's degree in 1976. Shortly after that, I got a job in Huntington, West Virginia, in a mental health program at a state hospital. I worked there four years and then got the job here in Minnesota.

If there was ever a good time to lose your hearing, it probably was when I lost mine because a lot of things that people my age or younger now take for granted have been developed in the short time I've been deaf.

TTYs used to be old machines that were really huge; now we've got them the size of a small typewriter plus computers can be used as TDDs. With electronics the way it is, I can see more advantages in the future. Computers will allow us, if we use them as TDDs, to contact people who are hearing and who have computers. It's my personal opinion that TDDs will become obsolete once computers really begin to spread out. It won't make sense to have a TDD that will do only one things when you can use the computer to do many things and contact more people.

Around 1971, Professional Rehabilitation Workers with the Adult Deaf (PRWAD) was being established. Before that, rehabilitation counseling with the deaf was just a sideline. VR administrators assumed that anyone who could fingerspell was qualified to work with deaf clients. The Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) was also getting started about that time.

In the beginning, interpreting was a nice thing to do. When I was in Nevada, an interpreter worked with the project. She was nice and tried hard, but she needed more experience. But you didn't really complain at that time. You accepted anyone who could help you in class. RID was good; it didn't train interpreters but evaluated them to make sure that the interpreters were qualified. At that time, I think interpreting was still more voluntary in the sense that interpreters didn't get paid; it was more the attitude that the work was important. Interpreting has now become more of a profession and also more demanding. That's the only word I can think of right now. Interpreters expect to be paid and they want to be paid enough to live on.

I understand that in Connecticut, interpreters belong to a union. Again, that's good. I read a couple of years ago that in Evansville, Indiana, most of the qualified interpreters signed up with the interpreter referral center there and when the interpreters complained that DVR wasn't paying what the center wanted, the center planned on filing a suit against the DVR for not providing interpreters for clients. So, interpreters have become more radical, really. The attitude has changed in the short time I've been deaf. It's obvious.

When I lost my hearing, the idea was that you went to Gallaudet, that was the main college. If you wanted technical training, you went to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) and got it. Now, though, there are many more opportunities for going to college. Here in Minnesota, the schools will provide interpreters and note takers. In almost any college in Minnesota, you can get an interpreters so you have many more choices. It's got its advantages and disadvantages. Often, you're maybe the only deaf person at that college. Your social life, I have heard from talking with the students in Mankato, is really nothing. You study all the time or maybe study and go to Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit friends because there are almost no deaf people in the town itself.

I feel, that for me, my speech helped a lot. If I didn't have good speech, it might have been more difficult to find work. Even though many things have changed, there still is a lot to the idea that not being able to speak is more of a problem than not being able to hear. So, I think my voice and being able to keep that has helped in finding work.

In the past, I thought all my job choices were like Chicago, New York, L.A., D.C. or Minneapolis-St. Paul--the big cities. Now deaf people have a lot more choices in the places they want to work and that includes private businesses and social service agencies
--all the different possible job choices. In the past, you probably never would have found a business that provided an interpreter or a TDD for its employees.

There are more jobs opening up like jobs in the program I'm in right now. That's happening all over the state. There are eight regional service centers and one branch office. That opens up opportunities for deaf people to work, not just in the big cities, but also in the small towns if they want.

I don't think in 1971, when I lost my hearing, you could have found that anywhere. So things have changed in that sense and so has the attitude of people. I was driving to an American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association conference in Kansas City and stopped at a Pizza Hut in a small town in Iowa. Usually, I don't bother to tell people that I'm deaf unless I have trouble understanding and everything went fine until the waitress asked me something when I wasn't looking at her. I said, "I'm sorry, I'm deaf and I have to see you." She kind of backed off, then she relaxed and signed slowly,
"M y-s i s t e r-i s-d e a f." I'm running into that more and more. I was eating in a restaurant recently with another person who signed but who was hearing and the waitress, when she talked to me, actually talked to me, not the other person. She also made sure I was looking at her and she talked a little slower. At first I didn't notice, but when she left, she signed "Thank you" so when she came back, I asked why. Well, her niece was deaf.

One thing I've noticed about TV is that the programs show deaf people more realistically. I remember one show--"Bonanza," I think--it was running before I lost my hearing or shortly after. It was about this boy who had been living in the forest with his grandfather for years. The boy was deaf and they brought him to the city. They taught him lipreading and after that, it was like he could hear; he understood everything. But now they show more of the real problems we face. The idea of sign language as shown on the TV program is more true to life than before.

Speaking of TV, I used to always try to find an action program or war movie or cops and robbers show where you could see the good guys and the bad guys and figure out what was happening even if you didn't understand all the talk. I was very selective about what I watched on TV. When I couldn't find any action programs, I would read, or my wife and I would talk, or I would work around the house or do something like that. With the closed captioned decoders, and especially with the increase in the number of programs with captions, I'm becoming selective again. When there were only a few captioned shows, I watched them all, partly to support the idea and partly because they were the only ones I understood. But almost every night now, they have competing programs on different channels, so I decide, well, I'm not going to watch TV tonight; I don't have to because there will be a captioned program tomorrow night and I can watch that. So I'm cutting back on my TV watching a bit.

My wife used to be hooked on "Dynasty." I was watching for awhile and felt myself becoming hooked, so I stopped. But a lot of people watch "Dynasty." I remember calling some deaf people to help with a police workshop so the police officers could meet them in a relaxed atmosphere. But it happened to be Wednesday night and no one would come because "Dynasty" was on. People told me that when they called people in Washington, D.C., the people would say, "I can't talk to you now. 'Dynasty' is on," and hung up on them.

Mainstreaming has boomed since 1971. Actually, it had been going on before that because my wife attended a program like that in Minneapolis and so did quite a few deaf people in Minnesota. But there were no interpreters; they had to get by with lipreading and copying notes. Many of these people have become successful members of the community. Almost everyone of them has learned sign language since and now they rely on it mainly for communication. Many of them have also married someone from a residential school even though they, themselves, didn't go. But with mainstreaming in the regular classroom without interpreters a memory, I'm not sure how it will affect the future of deaf people.

We have a son who is deaf. I don't think we talked about that before. He lost his hearing around the age of two and a half. We have no idea how it happened; my wife and I--neither one of us has hereditary deafness. He's in a mainstream program and we're happy about it. We feel because of the home environment, it is probably the best for him. I don't think it's the best for everyone. If deaf children can't communicate in the home, it's silly to send them to a school where they can communicate and then have them come back home at the end of the day where they can't. That's not an environment for success, really.

My wife and I both have a good command of the English language. We use what I'm using now at home. We don't use ASL with Shane but most of the time we use English word order. I say most of the time because my wife picks on me for not always using English. Sometimes it's just shorter for me to say "You finish eat you" so I don't use English all the time.

Again, I don't really use ASL. I read it with some people very well, with others, mmmm. The interpreter today used ASL and we sat and talked. It was fine. But when he interpreted using ASL, I had a difficult time following the lecture.

Just recently, I read that Gallaudet closed its linguistic research on ASL and a lot of people feel that Gallaudet is beginning to reject the idea of ASL and not support its use. Apparently, they've asked that all of the staff and faculty use the simultaneous method of communication, which means signing in English word order. Some people feel that's rejecting ASL.

I do feel that sometimes the deaf community is holding on to ASL too strongly. It's a language, yes, but all languages change and some deaf people fight every little change. It's a bit like in France, where they tried to eliminate the Americanized words from their vocabulary. Well, a lot of deaf people, no matter who they are, use at least some of the new signs in their conversation. It's just a part of language. Languages change just the same as cultures do and if you keep resisting change, it's not going to help anyone; you stay right where you're at. ASL is probably not the same now as it was 50 or 60 years ago. The same with English. If you don't change with the times, you end up losing everything.

So, in that sense, I feel that the deaf community will have to accept some changes in ASL because you can't keep things the same forever. It's not good, for one thing. It's the same with deaf education; some people think the residential schools are fine just the way they are. That's not true. Yeah, some of them are good, but they can always be improved. I know a lot of people really support the residential schools and I do, too, to a certain point. I don't think that you should--like with ASL--support the schools just because it's traditional. If the school is no longer needed, it's silly to keep it open. However, I think residential schools will always be best for some students and they should be kept open. Mainstreaming doesn't work for all kids, and my kid, maybe later we'll find out that he is succeeding academically but has no friends or social life and we'll send him to the residential school.

I feel, in general, I'm pretty well accepted by the deaf community. I'll be honest with you; part of it is the job. Part of it, though, is because I enjoy socializing with deaf people. Mankato doesn't have a large deaf community so, about once a month, we go to Faribault, where the school for the deaf is located, to eat with a group of people. We also attend different activities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, but it's about two hours from our town, so we don't do that all the time.

I see a lot of opportunities for deaf people in the future. Like I said, I lost my hearing 14 years ago and I've seen a lot of changes in those 14 years. Several deaf people here in Minnesota are in private business or supervisory positions and I don't think that would have happened 14 years ago. But if you look at some of the people who are now well known in the field of deafness, you find they're often hearing people who have been working in the field for 20 or 30 years. The deaf people who are well known got there late; they got well known late. Until recently, they worked with the grass roots while the hearing people kind of ran things.

The National Association of the Deaf is kind of an exception. In the American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association, for a long time it was mostly hearing people running things. I think it's still true. There are a few deaf people in management positions, but very few compared to the number of deaf people who have finished college or have succeeded in other ways.

Late-deafened people, like me, sometimes become leaders within the deaf community. Each person's involvement in the deaf community is a little different. In my case, I see myself becoming more involved than most late-deafened people. I'm married to a deaf women; I have a deaf son; I'm working in deafness, and I've pretty much accepted my life style.

I don't have a lot of problems with hearing people. I tell them, "I'm sorry; I'm deaf. I have to read your lips." If I don't understand, I ask them to write. I don't find a lot of resistance to that; most people readily accept the idea.

My wife has told me that it doesn't happen much to her, either. She has an intelligible voice, but sometimes, like when she's in a store, she has to tell people she's deaf. They understand fine before she tells them she's deaf and after she tells them, they can't understand a word. So long as they think she has an accent or something, they understand fine; but if it's because she's deaf, they don't understand.

I think that happens less often now and, as I said, more and more hearing people know a little sign language, which makes it more comfortable on both sides. When they're not afraid of the deafness, they understand our speech easier. Things are getting better.

Gail Hyde
Project Coordinator, Web Design