ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996 TAG: 9605150067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO NEWS OBIT
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
Ben Schowe came to Roanoke to nurse his sick wife and ended up changing how Western Virginia treats its deaf residents.
The energetic teacher of American Sign Language and mentor to both deaf people and the hearing professionals who work with them died Sunday of a heart attack. He was 75.
Schowe came here several years ago when his wife entered the Roanoke United Methodist Home. He cared for her until she died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease.
A deaf academic with a doctorate, Schowe worked for years in the populous and sophisticated deaf community around Washington's Gallaudet University. Retired as records manager at the Gallaudet archives, he soon began noticing the needs of Roanoke's smaller and more isolated deaf culture.
He began teaching American Sign Language in his home and set up a Virginia Western Community College program to train signers and interpreters for the deaf, the classroom assistants who work with deaf children. He set up a scholarship for sign language students to honor his wife, Laura Knight Schowe.
A resource center for the deaf - containing his extensive collection of videotapes and volumes on deaf education - was being created at the college at the time of his death.
"The man probably had more impact on education in the Valley for the hard of hearing than anybody in history," said Ron Coleman, the college's continuing education director.
Schowe encouraged Fran MacGregor to go back to school and now she's an American Sign Language teacher, interpreter for the deaf and employment specialist for Goodwill Industries.
She said Schowe was driven to help Virginians understand that American Sign Language was a "whole" language - complete with its own culture, grammar and rules of interaction, and not a subordinate of the English language.
Schowe and his second wife, Billie, were featured in a Neighbors section story last December about their wedding. The couple met when she took a signing class from him at the United Methodist Home.
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