Edna Adler is a workaholic in a gentlewoman's dress. There are reports she has been seen in old slacks and blouse picking berries, but in public her honey-blonde hair is always perfectly arranged, she is always appropriately dressed for her professional role and she is unfailingly courteous and patient with visitors. As you get to know her better, you realize this isn't veneer. Edna Adler is solid.

She is deeply committed to her work and intensely interested in anything and everything concerned with hearing impairment.

Edna Adler is also human. She does get tired and she does relax. She savors her free time and friends and loves to cook for them in her Southwest Washington condo with view of the Mall.

I have lived in Washington for close to 21 years, ever since 1966, when I accepted a job in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. That department was abolished by President Carter and the Rehabilitaiton Services Administration, along with the Deafness and Communicative Disorders Branch, where I worked, was placed in the new Department of Education.

I can retire at any time; I am more than eligible for retirement, but something makes me hesitate (pauses reflectively).

Perhaps it will help to go back to the time I lost my hearing.

I'm a small town girl. I was born and grew up in Marquette, on the shore of Lake Superior in Upper Michigan. I had a carefree, normal childhood centered around the beach and the hills beyond the town. I liked sports and I liked books. Marquette had a wonderful library, reachable for me on roller skates. When I was 10 years old, I came down with meningitis and, like many others who came down with it at that time, I became totally deaf. I've learned to live with deafness as have my friends. Possibly, this led to my current job.

I lost my hearing in the spring and my family wasn't sure what to do with me, so I didn't go back to school until the following January. A teacher at the state school for the deaf at Flint, whose home happened to be in Marquette, came home for Christmas and told my mother about the school and suggested it as a possibility for continuing my education. There were no schools or classes for the deaf near my home town, which is isolated in northern Michigan, a long way from the centers of populations in lower Michigan. The teacher took me with her to the school at Flint after the Christmas break. It was traumatic to leave my family, friends and everything familiar to go to school so far from home so soon after losing my hearing.

The experience of deafness was still very new and it was something of a shock when I arrived at the school for the deaf. Living in an institution was very different from living at home. Also, at that time, the school was experiencing funding problems; they seemed to make every effort to save money. It wasn't a pleasant place and the food was very poor. The only good thing was the quality of the teachers. They were very good.

I found it difficult to adjust to deaf people my age. I noticed how they tended to make contact with each other through touch, and I thought they were a little rough in the way they did it. There was a library in my home town that had been very important to me and when I arrived at the school for the deaf, I found most of these deaf children's didn't read, which really surprised me. To reduce the strangeness and loneliness--because I was only 11 at that time and I was 500 miles from home--I spent what time I could in the school library. That really helped.

In time, I learned to sign and accept my situation. I graduated in, let me see, 1932, which makes me a real oldy.

I went on to Gallaudet and found myself in a different world. From the moment I walked on the campus till the time I had to leave, I loved Gallaudet. For me, as for others, it made all the difference in the world that I had been able to attend Gallaudet. At that time, there were no alternatives except to go to a regular college for the hearing and the only college in my home town was a state normal school, which was set up to train teachers of normally hearing children. It probably wouldn't have been wise for me to go to that kind of school because at that time, there were a lot of negative feelings about deaf teachers. They were few and most were at schools for the deaf and there, in the vocational department, so things turned out for the best.

At the time I was at Gallaudet, the college was very small and everybody got to know everybody else. One teacher might teach several subjects. It was during the depression and most of us had little or nothing in the way of money but there was a wealth of warmness and sharing. Many of us held jobs all the way through our years there. For two summers, I couldn't afford to go home. It was hard, but I didn't know it because there was nothing to compare it with. We weren't permitted to go out at night and we didn't care much. We had socials on Friday and Saturday nights and everything was fine. It was enough, we didn't want any more. We had a wonderful theater where they put on plays in sign language. There were some complaints about the food but tell me what college student doesn't complain about the food? After my poor residential school experience, I, for one, enjoyed the food at Gallaudet.

Tuition, room and board and even my travel from home was paid for, still, you always needed some cash and my family couldn't help much. I had to borrow money and when I started adding it up--all I had borrowed--I realized that I had a lot of debt facing me when I graduated. But it was my good fortune that Congress started worrying about the hardships facing depression time students across the country and set up a work program. We were paid 25 cents an hour to work, mostly for the faculty, and I was able to earn up to $15 a month. That seems like nothing nowdays but it was pretty good for that time and really helped me out.

I never questioned anything. I just accepted what came along. I enjoyed my friends, I enjoyed my teachers, I found the whole business of studying worthwhile and I didn't really mind having to work my way through college. Washington, D.C., was a prime experience in itself. During my junior and senior years, we were permitted to leave the campus for dates, but we had to check in and out and it was mostly Saturday and Sunday afternoons. My children think it simply incredible not to be able to go out at night while in college; it's something they don't understand (laughs). But, really, it was a fun time. We were able to get along with very little money and we learned to converse and depend on one another and enjoy the pleasures that Gallaudet offered.

Strangely enough, when I graduated from Gallaudet in 1937, I ended up going back to the Michigan School for the Deaf. I hadn't applied for a job there; it just happened that the regular home economics teacher had decided to leave and while home economics wasn't a subject I had elected to take at Gallaudet, the instructor had begged me to do so. The class in Foods and Nutrition that year was very small and she needed more students to fill it out. I taught at the Flint school for one year and then was offered a more challenging position at the Missouri School for the Deaf at Fulton, where I stayed four years.

I enjoyed working there. The atmosphere was different; it seemed that the children counted in a way that you didn't sense at the Michigan school. It wasn't the teachers--they were good at both schools--but the administration.

Then, like most young people, I decided to get married. I married Gerald Adler from the Class of 1935 at Gallaudet. I had met him when we were both students there and knew him well.

We settled in Detroit, where Jerry was working for a real estate company. I found it very difficult just staying home. I had always been working or going to school so in about three days, I had a job myself doing office work. I kept on doing that until I was expecting our first child. Mike, an MIT Ph.D., is now with General Electric, for which he travels extensively and supervises the work of over 100 scientists and engineers. Our daughter, Karen, came along two years later. She is director of the reading program at an Atlanta area high school. While our children were growing up, I didn't work. Jerry was making enough money to support the four of us and, anyway, at that time, education of the deaf in Detroit was very oral. There was a big oral school there and they didn't want deaf people there to serve as role models so I didn't do anything in the way of paid work, using spare time doing volunteer work in the deaf community until our children were in high school.

My husband ended up leaving his real estate job to work for the State of Michigan in the Employment Commission. While there, he was asked by Wayne [State] University officials to find someone to develop a continuing education program for deaf adults in the Detroit area. Jerry had always felt that I should be doing something to fulfill myself more than I was, so I applied for the job and that was the beginning of my second career. I felt the need to go back to school and take some refresher courses and Wayne [State] University was conveniently close by and that's where I went. Somehow, that led me to decide to earn a master's degree and then I faced the truth: I couldn't get a masters in education. To do that, a person had to be able to teach normally hearing students, so my way was blocked.

Then it was my good fortune to meet Dr. Fred Berg, the brother of Tom Berg, a long-time teacher at Gallaudet College. He recommended that I change my career goal to Vocational Rehabilitation, something I had never dreamed of. Traineeships in Vocational Rehabilitation were available, so I decided, "What do I have to lose?" I applied and was accepted. Just at that time, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, where I now work, had awarded a research grant to the Michigan Association for Better Hearing and Speech in Lansing to demonstrate services to deaf adults determined to be non-feasible for regular rehabilitation services due to acute need for personal adjustment services. I was offered the position of head teacher and counselor at the MABHS program and found myself traveling between my home in Detroit and Lansing, a 75-mile trip each way. In spite of the travel and the need to manage home and family by remote control, it was an exciting time and I loved every minute of it. Adding to the confusion was the need to travel 180 miles one evening a week to attend graduate classes in downtown Detroit. This was followed by enrollment in a doctoral program at Michigan State University, necessitating adjusting to more evening classes and study. Evenings also had to be given to accompanying individual trainees to job situations and working along with them, often all night as in the case of bakeries. I lost my taste for doughnuts forever. Running restaurant dishwashing machines and mopping floors became routine activities for me as I modeled acceptable work behavior to the trainees.

You can do so much with and for this special population. We had some wonderful successes before the project was terminated in December of 1965. Unfortunately, there was no way the agency could continue the project and the State decided to move it to another location where women weren't permitted to serve on the staff. That closed the door for me.

Just then, the Michigan Association of the Deaf was looking for a director for a community services program for the deaf in the Flint area. The job was offered to me at the same time I received an offer from Washington, where the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) was looking for a staff person to assist with its program for deaf, hard of hearing and speech impaired people. This was quite a breakthrough so I had a difficult decision to make. Leaving Michigan when my husband was finishing work on his masters at the University of Michigan posed problems. Also, we had two children in college at that time and both were living away from home, which was expensive. I decided to accept the position in Washington and moved here. I've been in Vocational Rehabilitation ever since and have never regretted my move. After Jerry finished school and got some teaching experience in West Virginia and Maryland, he was offered a faculty position at Gallaudet College and joined me.

I think rehabilitaiton is a wonderful career area for deaf people and I regret that more deaf men and women are not in the field.

When I came to Washington in 1966, Mary Switzer was commissioner of the RSA. She was very conscious of the deaf community and of the need of deaf people for services. Boyce Williams, who at that time was RSA special consultant on deafness and communicative disorders, used his position to advise Dr. Switzer regarding the needs of the deaf and the hard of hearing. There was money available in those days and universities and other existing facilities and programs were encouraged to apply for short-term training grants for the purpose of conducting national workshops and conferences. In one year we would have, oh, I don't know, maybe up to 15 such national meetings. Those were wonderful years and much was accomplished at the workshops leading to the development of a large variety of new programs and services for the deaf.

The 1960s and '70s truly were a golden period.

To go back to the time I was with the project in Lansing, Michigan State University was across the street, so I figured it was a good time to start working on my Ph.D. I applied, was accepted and continued with that until December of 1965, when the project was terminated and I was offered a job here in Washington. After that, I ws so busy responding to my new job, which was very different and very demanding, that I never did go back to work on my Ph.D. I regret this. In 1980, Gallaudet College recognized my work by giving me an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

Many people in government work for areas like accounting and statistics and have no real contact with a client population. They are not involved in people services. It has been different for me. I actively work with and for deaf and hard of hearing people and speech and language impaired people and am involved in just about everything that affects people with hearing and speech impairments. So, no matter what happens--and I have had some unpleasant experiences--my own personal beliefs and goals help keep me going. During my years with the Deafness and Communicative Disorders Branch, I have always been extremely busy. We had big expectations for our workshops and research and I was always reviewing and editing reports, meeting with project staff, promoting new research and we had stacks of correspondence. I was taking work home all the time and some nights I wouldn't sleep at all but work till dawn, shower, put on fresh clothes and head for the office.

The job was there, so I did it, period. Just knowing I was doing something worthwhile was my reward.

I am genuinely sorry for the people who have no special mission, just impersonal paperwork the year around.

The deaf community has changed a lot. I think expanded postsecondary training opportunities have done miracles for deaf people, who are now in fields that were not open to them in the past. Deaf people going to regular colleges adopt new and broader attitudes and considerations and ways they look at the world and themselves. It's really changing the deaf community, which is also benefitting economically through the new upward mobility of deaf people.

P.L. 94-142, which Congress enacted in 1975, is having a profound effect on the deaf community. It's too soon to say whether it's good or bad, but there is no question that young adults are benefitting from the many postsecondary programs now available. We are not sure yet how mainstreaming will affect deaf children as they grow up. If it makes them different from deaf people who have gone to residential schools for the deaf, then there may be a fragmentation of the deaf community. It's too soon to know.

With the arrival of TV decoders, clubs for the deaf are less of an attraction; people are content to stay home and watch cationed TV and videotapes. We don't know for sure yet if captioning will help reduce the reading difficulties of deaf people but a few years ago, we weren't able to enjoy TV and much of the common, everyday language used by the general population was not that well known to us. Now that we are exposed to it constantly, we may become more adept in our own use if it and a little less separated from the hearing community.

Attitudes toward sign language and the use of it in public places have changed dramatically. Hearing and deaf people no longer feel embarrassed to use it in public. Community sign language classes are providing opportunity to professionals, parents, neighbors and co-workers of deaf people to attain manual communication skills and they are doing it by the thousands. Through exposure to deaf performers on TV and printed information about successful deaf people, the general public is changing its way of thinking about deafness. Open any magazine with pictures of deaf people, and you see how interactive with their environment they are. They're beautiful people, they're outgoing, they project success. It's the type of exposure we need more of--consistently--and, at the same time, we need to help more deaf people realize their potential.

That's also true of multiply disabled deaf people. They need all the help they can get. It's an area of special interest to me and I am always glad when I hear about deaf people working in this field because I know they will be especially dedicated to their services to their less fortunate deaf fellows. These severely handicapped deaf people are often difficult to work with, they are unable to speak for themselves and have numerous special needs. But we who have worked with them know they have potential and can achieve in proportion to that potential if given help.

Of late, the times haven't been good for organizations in the area of deafness, but things are looking up. Maybe the real or imagined breakup of the deaf community has had something to do with that. We can hope that mutual concerns will encourage deaf people to work together and support local and national organizations working on their behalf.

Self Help for the Hard of Hearing (SHHH) is a fast growing consumer organization quite similar to the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) in its goals. The difference in the two organizations is that the people who join SHHH are mostly people who are losing their hearing later in life while the NAD serves mostly people whose [deafness] is lifelong. The two groups, which are closely related in their concern for hearing impaired people, have much to share as they endeavor to expand and improve their programs. It is also heartening to see deaf/blind people taking action as deaf people have done for so long in advocacy efforts that are bringing national attention to their needs.

The most rewarding part of my work in the Federal government has been the opportunities it provided to share the company of some very wonderful and dedicated deaf, hard of hearing and deaf/blind people. When you go to professional conferences today, you find yourself among a lot of new professionals from a wide variety of agencies and that's exciting and reassuring.

Gail Hyde
Project Coordinator, Web Design