A favorite pastime of oldtimers is looking back. Leon and Horty Auerbach can look back with satisfaction.

Leon was lucky enough to be born in a deaf family and had a happy, normal childhood. Horty, as everyone calls her, had more problems growing up which may have contributed to her spunk as a young wife when times were hard.

The Auerbachs have grown old gracefully. Horty retains her wonderfully mobile face, which often says more than her hands. She has received many honors for her volunteer work. Leon is easy going and cheerful. He's content to let younger people mow the lawn and take care of heavy chores around their home in Hyattsville, Md., but like Horty, he gives much time to volunteer work.

Their comfortable home is filled with books, pictures and mementos of their travels.

Leon: It's strange. I was born deaf and my parents were both deaf but they weren't born deaf; they lost their hearing when they were little children. My sister is like them, she lost her hearing when she was four or five years old. I was the only one born deaf and none of my relatives were ever born deaf. The doctors can't figure it out. Perhaps it was a coincidence, a one in a thousand chance.

I was born in Brooklyn, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I know they have moved to Los Angeles but when I was growing up, their home was Brooklyn. My father worked in a clothing factory; my mother never worked, she always stayed home and took care of us children. There were actually five of us but two died. My father worked in a mill where they made shirts--VanHeusen or Arrow. I can't remember which.

I went to the New York School for the Deaf, also called Fanwood. It was in New York City at that time but later moved to White Plains. It was near the Hudson River and I would often get up in the morning and watch the water flowing by. It was beautiful. At night you could see the boats with their many lights moving up the river. They looked so romantic. I dreamed that some day I would ride one of the boats to Albany, but I never did.

With deaf parents and a deaf sister, my world was a deaf world. I also had a hearing sister and brother. My brother was a good signer and all of us depended on him to interpret or talk with outside people.

There were many activities sponsored by churches, clubs and the Frat (National Fraternal Society of the Deaf). The Frat always had an annual picnic and all five of us would go together. We'd bring our own food and enjoy the day with our deaf friends. And movies . . . oh, yes, we went to the old silent movies with titles. That was before "talkies" appeared in 1929. We used to love going to the movies and when I was a little boy, I'd often go alone. It only cost a nickel. Sometimes my parents would give me five cents for the movie and five cents for candy. I didn't like popcorn, I'd always buy candy. I'd go every Saturday and watch the serials. I've forgotten the names of the old actors but I remember the trains coming and then it would be continued next week and the next week. It didn't really make much sense; the serials didn't follow a sequence like they should. After the movie, they would always have cartoons. I remember one time I watched the movie and was sitting there anxiously waiting for the cartoons and there were no cartoons. They showed the newsreel and coming attractions, but no cartoons. Boy, did I get mad! I made a scene.

In the summer when it was warm, we would go to outdoor movies. We sat on benches and watched the movies under the stars. Of course, that was long before drive-ins were invented. When they started adding sound to the movies and discarded captions, I lost interest and spent more time reading or I'd find some deaf friends who lived not very far away and we'd talk.

We'd go to other picnics, we'd ride the boats, we'd go to the ball games and sit in the bleachers. It only cost 50 cents. There wasn't any shade or any overhead protection and the sun would bleach the seats. That's how they got the name "bleachers." Everyone would get tanned. Often they would hit a ball into the bleachers but I never caught one. I knew that if I could catch one of those balls, the players would autograph it for me, but I never did. A group of us boys would wait by the players' gate and I got to meet Babe Ruth. He was really wonderful. As far as I know, he never turned down a request for an autograph. He'd sign things left handed and he'd stand there with his cigar hanging out of his mouth. I have two or three of his autographs but I don't know where they are now.

Also, as a boy I loved to read. My home was near the public library and I remember taking my bike and leaving it outside the library while I checked out books and no one ever stole it. I don't think you could do that nowadays. I had a wire basket on my bike and I'd check out four or five books at a time. My favorite was Tom Swift. I think I read all the Tom Swift books. I remember reading about the poor boy selling papers and shining shoes and at the end he'd be rich. I always liked the kind with a happy ending. I hated stories with sad endings. I remember now, the success stories were in the Horatio Alger books. I read many books when I was a boy, but the stories didn't make a lasting impression even though they did much to help develop vocabulary and language skills.

Growing up deaf in New York City was fun . . . at least in my family and neighborhood. I never saw or heard of a family like the one depicted in the TV play, "Love Is Never Silent."

All the teachers at Fanwood could sign but that didn't matter. We all had to use oral communication so they tried signing and using speech at the same time. I remember my math teacher said that I talked very well. He said that he could understand me and it should make my parents proud. "Boy, your speech is very good and you have a good voice." So I would keep on trying to speak when I went in a store and asked for something simple, like milk, they wouldn't understand me and looked at me as if to say, "What's wrong with your voice?" As I grew up, I found out my voice wasn't good at all. Even if people understood me, they would ask if I was a foreigner or something. It was embarrassing. My children would say, "You know, you talk good." But they were used to my speech; when I was in a store, they didn't understand me. I gradually stopped speaking and depended more on pad and pencil.

Horty: I was born in Missouri. My father died in November, 1918, and I was born the following February. I had three brothers and no sister; I've always wanted a sister. To support her family, my mother went to work in a factory where they made overalls. She married again when I was two years old but continued to work. I could hear until I was nine years old when I lost all my hearing through spinal meningitis.

At that time, we lived in a small town called McGehee in Arkansas. There were no hospitals in that town so they decided that I would stay home and be quarantined. They had a big sign on the door of our house and people were not allowed to come in and visit us. My brothers and mother got shots to keep them from getting sick. It was a long time before I finally got well and before that the neighbors told my mother that I wouldn't live. They thought for sure I was going to die. I would talk and talk about seeing my father who had died before I was born. I would describe what he looked like and how he kept saying, "Come on." But I didn't die. That's an experience I'll never forget.

I had to learn to crawl all over again and then how to walk. The neighbor children would walk past our house and they would laugh at me because all I could do was sit there. I remember that very clearly. My parents didn't know what todo with me after I became deaf. They looked in the encyclopedia and found a picture of the two-handed manual alphabet and taught me how to use it. It was no problem for me to talk to them as I still had normal speech but I never could read lips, so they would write notes.

I told my mother, "You know why I became deaf? God is punishing me because a few years ago when I was on a train going to visit Grandfather, I saw two deaf ladies and I made fun of the way they were signing. God is punishing me because I laughed at them." Of course my mother said, "No, no, no. That's not the reason why you became deaf."

We didn't know about the school for the deaf and the first year after I became deaf, the principal of the public school wanted me to come back to school--the same school and the same class--and have me just sit there. I really felt left out. My friends got tired of writing to me so they just kind of left me alone. I read and read and read. I read all the Bobbsey Twin books, all the different children's books I could get my hands on.

My mother was always very protective of me because I was the only girl in the family. She wasn't so concerned about the boys. My stepfather had a violent temper, especially when he had been drinking. He never touched me, never; but I'll never forget how angry he got with my brother for climbing up the new church building. My stepfather whipped him and whipped him. It was horrible. But he did support me and my brothers, who were not his own children.

Finally, my parents heard about the Arkansas School for the Deaf in Little Rock. They got in touch with the people at the school and asked if they could accept me. So that fall, I believe it was in 1932, they made plans to send me to the School for the Deaf. It was the first time I was away from home. I was really heartbroken and my mother didn't want to send her only daughter away but she felt she had to. She couldn't bear to go to the school with me, so my father took me on the train.

When we arrived at the school and I saw all those kids moving their hands so rapidly, I was terrified. I remembered the two deaf ladies talking with their hands and how I had laughed at them. I thought now I'm going to be like them.

My stepfather felt really sorry for me and gave me some money but I didn't even look at it. We were really poor so I didn't expect much. But after he left, I looked at it and found I had a ten dollar bill. I felt rich beyond my wildest dreams. The most money I had ever had at one time was five or ten cents and here I had $10! The other kids came around pointing to their eyes to say they wanted to see it and I'd show it to them. The word spread that I was rich. A couple of hours passed by and my stepfather came back and asked, "Where is the money I gave you?" When he saw the $10 he had given me, he took it back. He had meant to give me only $1. So he took the $10 and didn't give me anything and there I was with nothing to show the kids. I really felt strange.

The supervisors were hearing and I became one of their pets because I had good speech. They started teaching me sign language and the kids tried to pull me away from the supervisors who were teaching Signed English or Pidgin Signed English (although we never thought of it that way back then) and teach me American Sign Language. In order to survive in the dormitory, where the kids signed so rapidly, I had to learn their system. Nobody seemed to notice it at that time but there were two different kinds of sign language in use at the school. The only distinction they would make was between oral communication and sign language.

By the end of the school year in May, I stood on the platform and gave a presentation in sign and speech. I was very proud of myself. It didn't hit me that they never mentioned I could hear up to age nine.

Leon: At my school, they had weekly chapel services. I didn't go home on weekends and so every Sunday morning they would have services and the teachers would come in and sign. I never saw an interpreter. Their signs were really good and I enjoyed watching them. We also had monthly Literary Club meetings where we would sit and tell stories and recite poems; but it was mostly stories, sometimes more like pantomime, acting it out. Signing straight or "cold" wasn't very interesting, but using a lot of expression, a bit of hamming it up, made it very interesting for people to watch.

One of the classics I remember was Reynard Fox, who lived up to his name. He was always very foxy. He was really an early con artist and he would tell stories in The Raindrop, a famous literary magazine for deaf children. I have an original copy somewhere. When I was a boy, I used to read every issue from end to end.

I took the Gallaudet College entrance exam and was accepted for the fall of 1935. I went on a bus because my dad couldn't afford the train. There were only about 50-55 students at that time. I roomed with a boy from New Jersey and we divided our room. Half would be New York, the other half would be New Jersey and the dividing line was the Hudson River. My roommate's name was John Blindt. We roomed together for three years. He's dead now.

I knew how to drive when I went to college and decided I wanted a car. John and I walked over to H Street, where there was a used car lot, and found a Model A for $50. We split it $25 apiece. At that time, students weren't allowed to drive on campus. You could drive, but it had to be off campus and we'd park on a nearby street. There was a good reason for this: if you could afford to buy a car, then you could afford to pay for your own tuition. At that time, all but one or two of the students got scholarships from Congress, like cadets at West Point.

I wrote to my Congressman's office and explained that my parents didn't have enough money to send me to college and he arranged a scholarship to Gallaudet. It paid for tuition, room and board; I had to pay for books, clothing and transportation. At that time, Fanwood had a special fund and they would give each graduating senior $100 to help get started. I used the money for the bus fare, clothes, books and dues for various things.

Horty: I graduated from tenth grade (the Arkansas School's highest grade) when I was 16 and went on to Gallaudet that fall. At that time, they didn't have any special VR counselors for the deaf. They did have a VR office but money was scarce and all they could give me was train fare, which I didn't need as my stepfather worked for the railroad and got a pass.

The superintendent of the Arkansas School for the Deaf was Mrs. Riggs. She begged clothes from different people so I would have enough for college. My parents were too poor to buy much in the way of clothing. I got money for tuition and room and board the same way as Leon.

There were three other students from the Arkansas School who went to Washington together so I didn't feel lonesome on the train. It took all one day, one night and half another day to get there. When I arrived in Washington, it was big and it was scary, but I had already adjusted to deafness so Gallaudet wasn't too bad.

The school year went by quickly. I wasn't too excited about going home for the summer because I was the only deaf person in the family. My family did try to learn the two-handed alphabet and progressed to some signs and finger spelling but there really wasn't communication in the home. It was more interesting being with other deaf kids and people who could sign. But I went home and because we were so poor, we didn't have much to do. I found a real thick book--a history of World War I. It was the most boring book I ever read, but I read it from beginning to end because I had nothing else to do.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn't become deaf. I might have stayed in that small town, married a hearing man and raised a whole string of kids without traveling all over the world like we have done or becoming involved in so many activities.

Leon: Sometimes I'd go downtown alone and buy things like clothing and candy or go to a movie. You could only take a girl out on a date on Sunday afternoon and you had to bring her back by five or six. The girls had to wear hose and gloves, they couldn't wear bobby socks. They looked so sophisticated in their best dresses. We'd walk to Union Station just for entertainment.

Horty: That's how I met Leon. The girls at Gallaudet today have their own cars and run around in jeans and shorts and stay out to all hours with their boyfriends but I really doubt if they have more fun. Since we were permitted so little contact with the boys, we enjoyed it all the more when we were together. We didn't have to be wild to have fun.

Leon: Our dining room was called the refectory. When I arrived at Gallaudet, the word was new to me. Refectory means an eating room, usually near a chapel or monastery or convent; the name has almost disappeared. The boys sat on one side and the girls on the other side of the building in another room. Everything was separated. If you wanted to meet and talk with the girls, you had to meet them in the afternoon outside on the campus. You weren't allowed to talk to them in their rooms. There was no physical contact allowed; in other words, you couldn't hold hands. It just wasn't allowed. Of course, the students found ways to get around this rule, like walking back to the dormitories after chapel services. The older students had a little more freedom; they could have dates on Saturday and the upperclassmen could go out in the evenings. But for the first two years, the preps and freshmen had to stay in their rooms and do their homework every night from 7:00 to 10:00. A faculty member would come in and check on the students.

The boys would walk over to H Street, which is about five blocks from Gallaudet, and they could walk up and down the street even late at night. It was perfectly safe. You can't do that today.

There were always more hearing teachers than deaf teachers, but some of the students came from residential schools, where there were no deaf teachers at all, so it was a new experience for them. Then, as now, some students came on campus who were hard of hearing, not deaf, and some had lost their hearing as youths or teens and had good speech but didn't know any sign language. Tom Dillon was in my class. When he arrived, he had absolutely no signs and we communicated back and forth by writing. He had attended public schools. They were highly selective about admissions at that time. Maybe 300 high school students would take the entrance exam and they'd accept only 40 or 50. Gallaudet had only 130-150 students while I was there. You knew everybody's name, where they came from and even their families. It was a very close-knit student body.

Gallaudet has always advertised that it uses simultaneous communication in the classrooms--that is, the professors talk and sign at the same time. They now call it total communication. Actually, fluency in sign language varied among the hearing faculty. Take good old Dr. Doctor (Powrie V. Doctor). He had a deaf brother, his mother worked at the Kansas School for the Deaf, and he grew up basically in the deaf world, yet he wasn't really good at reading sign language. If I signed without using my voice, he had a hard time understanding me. His own signs were clear, that wasn't the problem; he signed very well. But he had a hard time understanding the students who didn't have good speech, and that's the truth. Then there was Dr. [text missing] Ely. He grew up in a school for the deaf, his father was superintendent of the Maryland School for the Deaf. Dr. Ely signed very well but when he fingerspelled a word, especially if it was a long word, if he saw we were following him, he would fingerspell just the first and last letters. It was a kind of blur in between and you were supposed to guess what was in between. I liked Dr. Ely. We became used to his fingerspelling. He taught chemistry.

I can't remember all the hearing professors but one stands out, Dr. Irving Fusfield. His signs were so clear and he was also famous for his sarcasm.

I graduated in 1940. I was interested in science and talked to Dr. Percival Hall, the President of Gallaudet, and explained that I wanted to continue studying for a masters degree. Dr. Hall said, "Let's look around and see if maybe you can get into a college near a residential school for the deaf where you can work part time while studying for your degree." I got several offers. The Arizona School for the Deaf needed a teacher for printing. It was a part time job teaching printing and part time supervising and they paid me $40 a month plus room and board at the school, which wasn't too bad in those days.

Horty: Leon and I got married a year after graduation from Gallaudet and I joined him in Arizona. We lived in the chauffeur's quarters, adjacent to the superintendent's garage. It was one room with a tiny shower and toilet but quite comfortable. To earn my "room and board," I worked in the dining room, took care of the superintendent's small son and served as a substitute teacher. (In those days, husband and wife couldn't both be employed by the state.) We lived in Arizona for only one year but have vivid recollections of picnics in the colorful mountains surrounding the school, the dust storms, the 100 plus degree temperatures in summer, the month-long Cowboy Days celebration in February. A beautiful state and an idyllic first year of marriage!

Leon: I taught school while I attended classes at the University of Arizona. It was only a couple of miles from the school to the university and I'd go back and forth in my car. Some of the science classes required labs and the labs were almost always in the afternoon when I had to teach printing at the school for the deaf, so I changed my major to math. I continued as dorm supervisor in the evenings. I kept up that routine until one Sunday in December the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I had never heard the name Pearl Harbor before; I didn't realized it was in Hawaii.

Horty: All my brothers went to war. The oldest and the one down from me met each other in England. I'm grateful that none of them got killed.

I remember very clearly that we couldn't afford to buy much food. We would buy only one-fourth of a loaf of bread at a time. They would sell food that way in those days. The spiders bothered me more than the food shortage. I met my first black widow spider while we were at the Arizona School for the Deaf (shudders). It really scared me. I had had some experiences with tarantulas at the Arkansas school down in the basement of the dorm. I'm terrified of both; I just can't get over my fear.

Leon: While I was at the University of Arizona, one professor became a good friend. We would write back and forth to communicate. In April after Pearl Harbor, he asked me if I would be interested in research for the war effort. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was looking for young people interested in research. Yes, the MIT, the egghead school. Horty and I moved to Boston and stayed there until near the end of the war.

Horty: The Army needed him to help develop radar so we moved to Massachusetts. I had my first experience with a blizzard--and I mean a real blizzard--the first year we were there. I had had difficulty finding a job because people would ask me if I could read lips. Massachusetts was a very oral state and I kept answering no. I was really stuck. Out of frustration, I finally took a job in a factory. It had been converted from making some kind of push button thing to making digital controls for the Air Force. They were very cautious because it was dangerous work, but they accepted me. On my first day there was a blizzard. At that time, I had no car and the factory was very far from where we lived. I walked through the blizzard, fighting it all the way, and arrived at work. There were just a very few people showing up for work that day but I was allowed to stay.

It was a horrible machine I had to work on. It punched out some type of metal parts and it was piece work. The more you did, the more you earned. I was the only deaf person there. They had a safety device that went around your wrist so that when the punch came down, your arms were pulled out of the way. This one hearing girl wanted to make more money and the safety device slowed her down, so one day she decided not to use it and she got her hand caught in the machine. It destroyed her hand (shudders).

Leon: The war was winding down and Dr. Hall, who was still at Gallaudet, asked me if I would be interested in a teaching job. I had thought about doing that some day, so I talked to the supervisors at MIT and they said the war would soon be over and when it ended, they would have to cut back to normal staff. They said, "You had better go ahead and take the job." So we came back to Gallaudet in the fall of 1944 and stayed there until I retired last year after 40 years as a professor of mathematics.

The MIT had been paying me very good money and Gallaudet offered me $1,800 a year. Dr. Hall said we could live on campus in the little house they now call the Gate House, on the corner of Sixth Street and Florida Avenue. They deducted the rent from my salary. It was about $40 a month and they didn't charge us for the heat because it was connected to the central heating system. We lived there during the last year of the war.

Horty: It looked so small from the outside and was only a little bigger when you got inside. From having to buy one-fourth a loaf of bread at a time, we went to buying two eggs at a time. We lived in this tiny house with our two childiren. One was two and a half years old, the other 17 months. One day I was talking with a friend and a black lady came across the street and pointed to our children, who were sitting on the sidewalk throwing bottles in the middle of the traffic on Florida Avenue. We had to stop the traffic while we swept up everything.

Leon: We lived on campus during the last year of the war. We were there when they celebrated VE Day. It was really wild. That was the only time in my life that something like that happened.

I got to see the funeral of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. I was standing right near the casket while they were bringing it through town. I remember the hero's welcome for Eisenhower when he came back from Europe. People were crowded all along the streets yelling and screaming and throwing things. It wasn't like New York City's ticker tape but it had a flavor all its own. I saw all the presidents from Eisenhower, Truman, Kennedy to the last. I remember election night in 1948. We didn't have TV sets at that time so three of my friends went with me to the newspaper office where they had a big sign that gave election results. I had voted for Truman but I was afraid Dewey was going to win. I didn't like Dewey; he was a stuffed shirt. Truman would lead then Dewey would get ahead. About 10 p.m., the paper said Dewey would win easily. The next day, I was surprised to hear Truman had won. Dewey had gone to bed thinking he had won. The next morning, Truman came to Washington on the train and I was downtown again when they drove Truman and his wife through town. They had a big sign on the Washington Post building that said, "We will eat crow." I'll never forget that.

I went back to school at Catholic University (C.U.) to complete work for my masters. I didn't have a car then so I would ride the streetcar. There were no interpreters. I would go up to the professor and tell him I was deaf and ask if he could recommend additional reading to help me keep up with the class. Once in awhile, an instructor would loan me his notes but mostly I had to depend on the books. Sometimes I couldn't understand them and sometimes the assigned textbook was better.

There was a priest who sat next to me in one class. He was actually a brother, he didn't become a priest until later. I asked him if he would mind if I copied his notes and he was happy to let me do that. We became good friends. His name was Brother Bonaventura. He became interested in deaf people and joined the first sign class offered at C.U. It was taught by a woman named Slattery. I can't remember her first name, oh, yes, Gertrude. She married Earl Elkins and later they were divorced. One of their children, Earl Jr., is now an interpreter at Gallaudet. Gertrude was the first deaf teacher at C.U.

I graduated from C.U. with a masters and kept right on studying for my Ph.D. I went to see Dr. Leonard Elstad, who was president of Gallaudet at that time, and explained that I really needed an interpreter. He said he would see what he could do but nothing came of it. I took a couple of courses and paid for everything myself, but it was expensive.

I needed about 15 to 20 hours for my doctorate. I went to the University of Illinois and they had an interpreter there named Floyd McDowell. I got A's as long as I had an interpreter. I got some A's without an interpreter, but I also got some B's and C's. With an interpreter, I always got an A.

When I went to the University of Maryland, I had Lou Fant for an interpreter. It was a course really not for my doctorate but just something I wanted to take. I thought maybe I would add to it later. Many deaf people have gone through college and earned advanced degrees without interpreters but a good interpreter makes it easier and you learn more.

Horty: They were good years, if hard years. I got a lot of satisfaction helping Leon up the academic ladder and raising our kids. As the years passed, our financial situation improved and we were quite comfortable. We now have seven grandchildren. Three live in England and four live in this area so I get to play with them often. We've had a happy life and are enjoying retirement even though some bad things have happened, like two grandchildren having leukemia in the same family. It really puzzles the doctors. They have studied the whole family on both sides and have decided it must be the environment or the house where they lived but they're not really sure. Both children are now in remission and we are optimistic they will be cured.

We're both active volunteers. I help out at the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association (ADARA), Gallaudet and our church. We don't attend the clubs much any more but we have a pot luck group that we've been with since 1952. We get together once a month and eat pot luck, watch films and watch each others' children grow up, get married and have grandchildren. I'm glad to say that many other people in the Washington area have imitated our pot luck group.

I strongly recommend that retired people get involved and keep involved in volunteer services connected with deafness because it's a wide open field and there is a very great need. It will keep you busy and happy.

I have noticed there is a decline in club activity and church attendance but picnics and athletic events are well attended. It may be that younger deaf people aren't interested in getting involved and accepting responsibilities as in the past but I think there will always be a deaf community because of our common communication. We're so much more comfortable with each other. No matter how much we love our hearing friends, when there is a crowd of people, half deaf and half hearing or 75/25, the deaf people always tend to get together. They'll talk with the hearing people for awhile then they get tired of that. It's almost never comfortable.

Leon: I help out at the NAD Credit Union and at the Gallaudet National Information Center on Deafness. They have asked me to sub teach or act as a fill-in while they recruited a full-time teacher but I tell them "No way." But I know they're having a hard time finding qualified math teachers.

Horty was talking about communication problems between deaf and hearing people. I remember years ago we didn't like signing in public; we'd keep our signs low and inconspicuous. It's different now. People sign everywhere and think nothing of it. Hearing people understand our need to communicate in language that lets us be comfortable in social situations and more and more hearing people can sign. But for extended conversations, it's still more comfortable for deaf people to talk with other deaf people.

Mainstreaming has some positive things in it as well as many negative things. For one thing, there is very little social life, almost none. Our daughter was director of interpreters in New Hampshire, where they don't have a school for the deaf. Deaf children have to go to mainstream programs except for a few that go to Vermont or Connecticut. Probably 90% of them are mainstreamed. I went to visit my daughter and sat in a couple of classes. It was interesting. I thought it was good for the really smart kids but for the average kids, it was really difficult. I noticed that many of the teachers couldn't sign and depended on an interpreter. In the public school classrooms, there were like 10 hearing kids and one deaf child or maybe 20 hearing and two deaf children and the interpreter would be signing away. If the deaf kids didn't understand and raised their hands and asked the interpreter to repeat, the interpreter would say, "Wait a minute," and by the time she repeated what was said, the instructor would be like 10 blocks ahead. So the deaf children stopped asking questions and just sat there. They weren't learning anything; they were spending their time daydreaming.

Gail Hyde
Project Coordinator, Web Design