
DATE: Thursday, March 20, 1997              TAG: 9703200035

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL  

SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  274 lines

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: * A story on deaf culture in Thursday's Daily Break incorrectly named Jean Drudge as president of the Tidewater Association of Hearing Impaired Children. She is past president of the group. Bob Carper is the current president. Correction published Friday, March 21, 1997. * COMMUNITY IN SILENCEAS TECHNOLOGY OPENS UP NEW OPTIONS FOR THE DEAF, MANY WORRY THAT ``PROGRESS'' MAY MEAN THE LOSS OF THEIR UNIQUE CULTURE.

TRAVIS CARR straddles the back of his chair, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around the young woman seated in front of him. Shannon Reilly slouches backward, resting her head on his shoulder. Both follow the animated conversation of friends bunched around the green plastic tables of the Greenbrier Mall food court.

Carr, 18, is deaf. Reilly, 15, hears but learned sign language from deaf family members. They met at Virginia Beach's Ocean Lakes High School. Both sign fluently, but for now their hands are still. Reilly holds both of Carr's hands in hers, in front of her heart.

Five days a week, they live in the hearing world of mainstream public schools. Tonight, for a few hours, they enter the world of the deaf.

Around them are dozens of deaf adults and children, from jumpy elementary school children and their middle-aged parents to senior citizens leaning on canes and signing with arthritic fingers. The deaf community has taken over the food court tonight for a weekly gathering called a Silent Supper, which introduces deaf people to hearing students learning American Sign Language.

A few tables away from the teenagers sit Wiley and Louise Smith. Married for 37 years, Louise has the habit of finishing Wiley's sentences. Wiley's large, wrinkled hands are tanned from the sun, a reminder of his years growing up on a North Carolina farm.

Living in a hearing family in the days before the deaf had access to telephones, Smith had few opportunities to meet other deaf people. When his sister-in-law told him about Louise, he kept in touch with her through letters. But letters were a pale substitute for personal companionship. He bought a car and drove nine hours through deep snow to visit her in South Carolina.

``I didn't mind the snow. I was happy to see her,'' Wiley Smith said, winking at his wife. ``She was worth it to me.''

The Smiths still travel to see their deaf friends. On Sundays, they drive from their home in Chesapeake to Norfolk's Deaf Missionary Church. And on Friday nights, they drive to alternating area shopping malls for Silent Suppers.

On this night, like most times deaf people come together, folks linger for hours, becoming so absorbed in conversations that they lose track of the clock. ``Deaf time,'' they call it.

The deaf cherish these Silent Suppers. It's a time to reconnect - with their culture and community. A community that lives among, yet apart from, the hearing world that surrounds it.

At a time of enormous social and technological change for the deaf community, Silent Suppers are a link between cherished traditions and an uncharted future.

Preserving deaf culture - a culture that most hearing people do not even know exists - is more important than ever before. Many of the institutions that define deaf culture - residential schools for the deaf and local deaf clubs - are disappearing. Some in the deaf community are afraid their culture will disappear with them.

If the deaf are to keep their culture alive, many say, they need to educate the hearing community.

Hearing people traditionally have created legislation and social policies out of a sense that they know what is best for deaf people, that they know what deaf people want.

What many deaf people really want, however, is for hearing people to listen.

Lynn Frankel grew up thinking of herself as a hearing person. She was raised in ``oral schools'' that did not allow her to sign. The instructors who taught her to read lips, considered her a great success. But today Frankel calls herself an ``oral failure.''

She did not learn to sign until she went to college to pursue a degree in deaf education. But she didn't learn ASL, considered the natural language of the deaf. She learned a sign system developed by hearing educators called Signing Exact English.

``Gosh, what a culture shock,'' Frankel said. ``The kids told me they couldn't understand my signing.''

She made a deal with the superintendent. She'd work for free as a dorm counselor and tutor the other kids in English if they'd teach her ASL.

``I picked up ASL very naturally,'' Frankel said. ``It was like, `Wow, I can finally understand everything that is being said in the room without my eyes falling out from trying to lip read. I loved every minute of it.''

Frankel later went to Gallaudet University, the nation's only liberal arts school for the deaf, where she met her husband.

``I was, and thought of myself as, a hearing person until I was 21 years old, and realized, `Hey, I'm deaf like them,' '' Frankel said. ``I'm not a hearing person. I had to really accept myself as a deaf person. Finally when I got involved with the deaf community at age 21, I felt like a whole person. I felt I belonged somewhere finally.''

Outside the deaf community, the deaf often live as a minority of one. Ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents. More parents today are learning to sign, but not enough, Frankel said.

Like immigrants, the deaf use a foreign language and are frustrated by the difficulty of communicating. And like minority groups, the deaf suffer discrimination. But unlike ethnic minorities, they have no support system except for the deaf community for sharing their minority status.

Most deaf children - 86 percent in Virginia - now attend mainstream public schools with hearing children.

Enrollment at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Staunton has fallen by half since the creation of mainstreaming in 1975. Enrollment at VSDB-Hampton has fallen by 30 percent in the same period, said Bob Whytal, director of the Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind.

Many hearing educators and lawmakers assume that deaf children prefer to attend classes with hearing children, Frankel said.

The deaf community disagrees.

Many worry that mainstreaming is dispersing the community, cutting children off from adult role models and guides. Some deaf people even signal their contempt by signing ``mainstreaming'' combined with the sign for oppression.

Frankel, who teaches at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Hampton, decided to help organize Silent Suppers to welcome deaf people - especially those who grew up in mainstream schools or learned to sign later in life - into the community.

``I've always had a soft spot in my heart for other oral failures,'' Frankel said. ``I always try to reach out to them and get them involved in the community.''

While educators have squabbled over the best way to educate the deaf, the deaf community quietly evolved its own culture and community - so quietly that most hearing people have no idea it exists.

In his performances, deaf story teller Gil Eastman tells of being treated to an afternoon at the movies as a child. Eastman, now a professor at Gallaudet University, would return to the residential dorm and act out the movie's plot for his friends. Or at least what he imagined the plot to be.

Without access to telephones, radio and movies, deaf people created a rich tradition of story telling. They formed intensely personal, close-knit communities centered around their schools, local deaf clubs and the common bond of ASL.

Today, most television programs and newly released videocassettes are closed-captioned for the deaf. The deaf also can communicate through TDDs (telecommunication devices for the deaf), fax machines, cellular phones, pagers, an international telephone relay service and the Internet.

The deaf have dozens of web sites on the Internet, forging a more national community. The Net also has helped the deaf to organize politically, arranging boycotts of businesses or opposition to legislation online.

But e-mail messages typed in telegraphic style will never replace ASL.

Virginia Beach resident Jay Shopshire, a popular figure on the deaf scene, has little interest in online communities. But he never misses a Silent Supper.

An animated and expressive signer with a quick wit and stocky build, Shopshire faintly resembles Robin Williams.

``I couldn't live without my deaf social life,'' said Shopshire, who grew up in California in a deaf family. ``When I was young, I went every day to a deaf social club. I went to a deaf school. When I moved here, there were no deaf clubs. I had to start one.''

There were more than 96,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing people in Hampton Roads in 1990, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's about the same as the national average, with about one in every 10 people having a hearing impairment.

Although Shopshire is thrilled with the new opportunities open to deaf people, he adds that technological advancements for the hearing world are often setbacks for the deaf community.

``Movies were captioned when they first came out, you know,'' Shopshire said. ``Silent movies. My parents used to go see them, and they liked them very much. Then the talkies came and ruined everything.''

But even when the deaf have access to hearing culture, they don't always understand it.

``I remember when the first captioned commercial aired on TV,'' Shopshire said. ``It was 1978. It was an Ex-Lax commercial. It was the only one they captioned, and I thought to myself, `Hmm, the deaf must have a problem with that.' ''

There is some technology, however, the deaf community would rather do without.

When the subject of cochlear implants comes up, some deaf people grimace. Cochlear implants are electromagnetic devices that stimulate hearing, sometimes well enough to let the deaf manage telephone conversations. Implants are surgically placed in the skull and require several pieces of equipment worn externally - outside the ear and on a belt around the waist.

Some deaf adults, and many hearing parents of deaf children, see implants as a godsend. Deaf children benefit most if they receive the implants around age 2, one of the most crucial periods of language acquisition, said Dr. Thomas Brammeier, a Virginia Beach surgeon and audiologist. Through implants, Brammeier said, doctors may someday ``cure'' deafness.

But that's what horrifies many deaf people.

Some of the more radical deaf activists sneer at the notion of a deaf ``cure'' and compare the implants to cultural extermination. Others simply think 2-year-olds are too young to undergo invasive surgery.

The deaf have their own way of describing the implants, forming the sign for ``potato'' behind the ear to denote the small bulge created by the electromagnet beneath the skin. Implants make deaf children ``think hearing,'' said Cynthia Vass, a deaf mother who brought her two deaf children to a recent Silent Supper.

``Look at my kids,'' she said.

Vass gestured to her children, who were trying to fool the adults into snapping their fingers on a mouse trap disguised as a pack of chewing gum. ``They're happy. They're fine. Why did God make people deaf?'' she asks.

One of the greatest fears about cochlear implants is that they will shrink - or even eliminate - the deaf community.

``Maybe in the future there will be no deaf kids,'' said Ralph Vernon, a deaf father of a hearing daughter. ``Maybe the deaf community will become smaller and smaller. Deaf people don't want these medical devices, though, and will fight against things like the cochlear implant.''

Through Silent Suppers, Frankel hopes to educate parents about the deaf community's perspective on cochlear implants. Gallaudet University and the National Association of the Deaf have led the fight against cochlear implants.

``I know that many of these (hearing) people are sincere and really do want to help, but sooner or later society must understand that making a `hearing' person out of a deaf person does not solve the problem,'' said Jack Gannon, a spokesman for Gallaudet. ``You don't change a black person into a white person or vice versa. That's not the solution. It is the understanding and acceptance of who we are and what we are and respect for our diversity that makes us better people.''

Many in the deaf community wonder what their culture will be in the future. It may include more families like the Drudges.

Andrew Drudge, 6, wears the transmitter of his cochlear implant on a black fanny pack around his waist. Good thing, too, his mother says. Equipment like that breaks easily.

Andrew's frantic pursuit of his older siblings and the family's Rottweiler often sends him tumbling to the floor, knocking off the small, disc-shaped receiver magnetically attached to his skull.

His world goes quiet until the receiver is reattached.

Andrew and his deaf sister Kristie communicate with a combination of signing and speech. Ten-year-old Kristie's voice is high and reed thin. Five years after receiving a cochlear implant, she is still getting used to recognizing sounds as speech and to using her voice.

Kristie's mother, Jean, learned to sign when she discovered Kristie was deaf.

Drudge has immersed herself in the field of deafness ever since. The president of TAHIC, the Tidewater Association of Hearing Impaired Children, Drudge persuaded the Virginia Beach public school system to keep its center-based program for 60 deaf and hard-of-hearing elementary school children in one building. Deaf kids need to be around other deaf kids - especially older role models, Drudge told them.

Determined to give her kids ``the best of all worlds,'' Drudge has provided a deaf community for them of her own creation.

But like many hearing parents of deaf children, she often feels caught in the middle. The Virginia Beach mother is painfully aware that her children are part of a culture she does not share. She knows what people say about hearing mothers like her.

``If Kristie decides she wants to go to (the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind at) Staunton when she's older, she can go,'' Drudge said. ``If she decides she wants to take off her implant and never wear it again, it will be her decision.''

The deaf community is no stranger to change.

Its language still bears the marks of its history. The sign for president draws the outline of the Colonial tri-cornered hat. The sign for newspaper suggests the motion of an archaic printing press. The deaf have invented new signs for microwave, videocassette recorder and electronic mail.

Whatever its anxieties about mainstreaming, implants and other technologies, the deaf community will continue to flourish so long as people cherish its language and its heritage, Frankel said.

``The deaf community will always be around,'' Frankel said. ``To really kill out the deaf community, you'd have to kill off the people. Regardless of whether they close down all the deaf schools in favor of mainstreaming, there are still people . . . who will fight to keep the culture alive and well.'' MEMO: For information about Silent Suppers, call Lynn Frankel at (757)

247-8071 (TTY) or Cynthia Ugarte at 498-5436 (voice). ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Ben Vess, 13, of Virginia Beach; Holly Foster, 15, of Richmond; and

Jennifer Powell, 12, of Chesapeake joke in sign language at the

Silent Supper.

Andrew Drudge, 6, of Virginia Beach, shown here with the family dog,

has had a cochlear implant - opposed by many deaf people - to

stimulate hearing.

Photo

IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Andrew Drudge, 6, center, has a cochlear implant, which is delicate

but doesn't keep him from a rowdy game with brother Daniel, 8, who

can hear. KEYWORDS: DEAF