Kitty O'Neil - No Fear

I am someone who self-describes as "risk-averse." Today's post is about a woman who is absolutely the opposite of that. Kitty O'Neil, raised by her widowed Cherokee mother and deafened as a baby, was a highly ambitious and extremely talented athlete, driver, and stuntwoman. She achieved over twenty world records in spite of ableism, racism, and sexism. Kitty was adored by all who knew her. Many commented on her warm, sunny demeanor and admired all that she had accomplished. Kitty was, for lack of a more philosophical assessment, simply incredible.

Kitty, late 1970s

Roger Demosthenes O'Kelly - A Most Remarkable Lawyer

Here's a sneak peek into my research process: I usually get a handle on the basics of the person's life story through Wikipedia, then go to Google for the detailed information and primary sources (meaning accounts written about them during their lifetime). This post did not go that way. The Wikipedia article is very short and poorly researched, and unfortunately I could not find many articles online that provided more information. Luckily, they did cite a couple primary sources, so I got to spend time going through old newspapers and census records, which I actually find quite fun!

Roger, 1927

Ragnhild Kåta - Living Well

A running theme I have inadvertently created in this blog is how important equal access to education is, even and especially if accommodations need to be made.  Convincing the general public that people with disabilities have a right to an education has taken centuries of work, thanks to many activists like Helen Keller, a deafblind American woman. Thinking about her got me wondering about others like her in countries outside of the United States. In my research for topic ideas, I found today's subject. She is not "Norway's Helen Keller;" she was an inspiration to Helen Keller herself.

Ragnhild and Hofgaard

Alice Cogswell - Beginnings of a Language

My main goal for this blog is to tell stories that many may not know. In their own communities, these individuals are famous, but are not well-known beyond this. I decided to look up important figures in the history of deaf education in America and, lo and behold, I found a great story I hadn't heard before.

A quick note in terminology: capital-d "Deaf" refers to the culture and community of deaf (lower-case-d refers to the physical hearing impairment) people around the world. They use sign language and have a rich heritage, history, and literature. They may not be united by blood or geography, but they are joined together by their shared languages and experiences. Many in the Deaf community do not feel that they are disabled and have protested that the use of cochlear implants are creating a slow genocide of the Deaf culture. They argue that there is nothing about them to "cure." Because of this, most Deaf people prefer the medical terms "deaf" or "hard of hearing" instead of "hearing impaired" or "disabled." The worst of the enmity against cochlear implants has died down since they were first given FDA approval in 1984, however it is still an important issue to many in the Deaf community. Click here for an article that talks more about the cochlear implant debate from the Deaf perspective.

My bias as a speech-language pathologist (and not a member of the Deaf community) is that cochlear implants are an amazing technology that can provide access to sound for tens of thousands every year. I still find this debate interesting and learned about it many times during my schooling, even writing a paper on it in an undergrad history class. Deaf people have accomplished amazing things over the centuries and continue to - this should be celebrated and taught. One mother of a child who uses cochlear implants wrote an excellent article in 2014 articulating her conflict of helping her child medically while still giving him access to his Deaf community.

Back to our story today. The pioneer of Deaf education in America was Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. He, Laurent Clerc, and Dr. Mason Cogswell founded the first permanent institution for the education of the deaf in North America in 1817: "Connecticut Asylum (at Hartford) for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons" (now known as the American School for the Deaf). Gallaudet's inspiration for this school is credited to his neighbor, Alice Cogswell. She is our focus for this post.

Engraving of Alice from 1889