As I write this, I would like to think that my Gallaudet experience actually began in 1964 when I read a poster at the local deaf club in Aberdeen Scotland. The poster mentioned try-outs for the British Deaf Olympic team.
An all-expense paid trip to America, where the Olympic Games for the Deaf were to be held, led me to try-out. At that time, I knew next to nothing about Gallaudet and it was not until I learned that I made the track and field team in 1965.
Ironically, while I made the team by running the 800 and 1,500 meters, track was not my first choice. I preferred soccer (football, as it is known in Britain). Living in the nation that invented soccer, and having so many talented deaf players, I felt my chances of making the team laid in track and field. I am glad to this day, that I made that choice.
When I first set foot on the Gallaudet campus, it was not as a student, but as a participant in the Deaf Olympics. Accommodation was at Ely Hall. Gallaudet offered a whole new world for me. Education for the deaf in Scotland was far from perfect, with emphasis on lip reading and speech at the expense of an actual education. Sign language (British Sign Language) was frowned upon. Scotland was light years behind the U.S. especially in deaf education in the ‘60s.
The following year, 1966, saw me once again set foot on campus - this time as a student. I entered the Prep Program to prepare me for proper college. Growing up in a country where shillings and pence dominated the currency (Britain had not yet switched to the decimal system) left me with quite a bit of catching up to do. Algebra, too, was new to me. The fall of that year I joined the soccer team and became a member for 4 years. Many friendships were born, and to this day, I still keep in touch with some of the former players.
While this is not supposed to be about how I got to Gallaudet, but with my memories while there. What stands out is the mass protests against the Vietnam war. I joined thousands of students at the Washington Monument in 1967. Then, again, when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, the National Guard was on campus and the student newspaper, the Buff and Blue, won a national award for photography showing the numerous fires burning in DC with the Capital in the background.
So many memories and after 30 years of my teaching career mostly as Social Studies teacher at the high school level at the Delaware School for the Deaf, I consider my time at Gallaudet as among the best years of my life.
Thank you, Gallaudet.
(Interviewer: Barbara Hong Richardson, June 12, 2020)