Valley Favored Home to World’s Deaf

This is the first of two articles on the deaf.

Something curious started happening in the San Fernando Valley about three years ago.

Deaf Romanians began arriving in large numbers.

“They were just showing up all of a sudden,” said Jacque Sierad, who works with the deaf at West Valley Occupational Center. “It blew our minds.”

But the influx didn’t come as a complete surprise to staff members at the Valley office of the state Department of Rehabilitation.

They knew the Romanians came here for the same reason that large numbers of deaf Israelis arrived in the Valley several years before. And for the same reason that scores of other deaf immigrants and thousands of deaf Americans have found their way here.

The Valley is a magnet for the deaf. There is a larger concentration of deaf people living in the Valley than anywhere else in the United States and most likely in the world, say experts in the deaf community.

Like many people, the deaf began settling in the Valley after World War II as houses began nudging out the orange groves. For the deaf and hearing alike, the Valley promised to be a good place to raise children.

“The deaf started moving to the San Fernando Valley, one after another,” said Donald L. Rosenkjar, who is deaf and runs the Valley office of GLAD, the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness.

The migration never stopped and was helped by a deaf grapevine that seemingly stretches to several continents.

Some explain the phenomenon by comparing it to the chicken and the egg. The influx of deaf people to the Valley prompted the creation of services for them, and more services and a larger deaf community attracted still more people.

Estimates of Number Vary

Estimates of just how many deaf live in the Valley vary widely, but statistics kept by the state indicate the number is high. Statewide, 6% of the Department of Rehabilitation’s resources were spent on the deaf, but 19% of the Valley office’s money went to deaf services, said Allan Abrams, a supervisor of deaf programs at the department’s Valley office.

There is one counselor for the deaf in most of the department’s 19 district offices, but in the Valley there are what amounts to 3 1/2 counselors who maintain caseloads 30% heavier than the state average.

Hidden from the view of most people, a deaf culture is very much alive in the Valley. It has provided those who cannot hear with their own customs, values, clubs, churches, educational opportunities and a language that has as much French influence as it does American.

Within this world, the deaf often marry each other and more than likely raise hearing children who sometimes learn American Sign Language before they learn to talk.

Variety of Services

In the Valley, deaf tourists sign up for deaf tours through deaf travel agencies. Deaf gays meet in a North Hollywood church. Young deaf women compete in an annual beauty pageant. Deaf bridge players play together, as do the bowlers and basketball players.

The deaf worship in churches and a synagogue that hold sign language services for them. New deaf immigrants meet regularly, as do the stamp collectors and photographers. Even deaf professionals who must deal with hearing clients have their own elaborately designed answering service in Van Nuys.

More than one chapter in the history of the deaf has been written in the Valley.

The creation of the telecommunications device that the deaf use as a telephone was prompted by a mother from North Hollywood who kept nagging the phone company because there was no equipment available to reach her pregnant deaf daughter across town.

Deaf Synagogue

The first deaf synagogue in the country, Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf in Arleta, was started 25 years ago. The congregation had a key role in developing Hebrew sign language in America.

The milestones extend to the intellectual center for the Valley’s deaf community, California State University, Northridge, which since the 1960s has graduated more deaf students--more than 500--than any other university in the nation.

The university’s commitment to meeting the needs of the deaf student has trickled down to post-high school educational facilities, where interpreters and other special services are routinely provided. About a dozen Valley schools and churches also teach sign language.

Meanwhile, the National Center on Deafness, housed at Cal State Northridge, has instructed some of the leading deaf educators in the country and, through its interpreter services, has made it possible for hundreds of deaf students to graduate from the university.

Center Founded in 1963

The center was founded in 1963 with a federal grant to improve the teaching of deaf children. Even though schools for the deaf had existed for 100 years in this country, most graduates were marginally employed at best and most left high school reading on a third- or fourth-grade level.

Ray Jones, the first and only director of the center, envisioned the National Leadership Training Program as helping hearing educators better teach the deaf. To his amazement, two deaf teachers applied to the program in 1964.

“We had been led to believe deaf students couldn’t make it,” Jones recalled. “In those days, the expectations of deaf persons were low.”

The two trailblazers completed the program, and, since then, scores of deaf leaders, with Cal State Northridge master’s degrees in hand, have gone on to run deaf programs at schools and government agencies from Alabama to Micronesia.

The center even makes house calls: Dan Levitt, a master interpreter at the center, left in March for New Zealand to help establish that country’s first interpreter training program.

What is it like living in a silent world?

To an outsider, some of the answers are surprising.

In conversations with the deaf, the term “deaf culture” surfaced over and over again. Many who were interviewed said they do not consider their deafness a handicap, but rather a link to a distinct culture apart from the hearing world. They would rather compare themselves with other ethnic groups than with the disabled.

The deaf say they possess their own intricate language and other cultural traits that make them unique. They like to note that, when there is a room full of deaf people using sign language, it is the hearing person who is handicapped.

“You have to spend time with us to understand that it’s a culture,” said Carol Billone, a schoolteacher from North Hollywood who is the director for the XV World Games for the Deaf to be held this summer in Los Angeles. “I get along fine with you, but I’m comfortable with my world. . . . We are a special breed apart.”

Those who most strongly identify with the deaf culture also were the ones who answered “no” without hesitation to the question: “If you could start hearing tomorrow, would you want to?”

“What’s the point of having my hearing? It would distract me,” said Gregg Brooks, one of four deaf people who work at NFSS-West, a store that sells flashing doorbell signals, vibrating alarm clocks and other electronic gadgets to the deaf in Los Angeles. “There has to be a reason why we are deaf.”

Brooks even took off his hearing aids before he was interviewed. He explained that this way he would pay more attention to what the reporter was saying because he would have to train his eyes on her lips and facial expressions. Brooks’ eyes are his ears, and in recognition of that he has decorated the store with paintings of eyes.

Children’s Perspective

Even the hearing children of deaf parents have what might be considered a startling perspective on deafness.

Tyrone Reins, a 10-year-old from Canoga Park who is not deaf, lives in a household where his mother is hearing-impaired and his father, sister and two brothers are deaf. All sign and even the family dog, Snoopy, responds to sign language.

Tyrone’s sister, who attends a deaf residential school, tells him she is happy with her deafness because the deaf have more friends. His father also has said he is glad he is deaf.

If he had a choice, Tyrone said, he would “probably” become hard of hearing so he could live comfortably in both worlds.

But not all deaf people embrace their deafness. Although there is an almost unanimous consensus among the deaf that there is a deaf culture, there is one camp that prefers to slip in and out of the deaf community while chiefly identifying with and working in the hearing world. Many of these people can lip-read and speak fairly well.

Doctor’s View

“I’m not going to say I am proud to be hearing-impaired,” said Dr. Stan B. Kunin, a veterinarian who has lost 80% of his hearing. “I still see deafness as a handicap. I still feel I miss out on a lot.”

Kunin has the resources to minimize his limitations: He wears expensive hearing aids; his TV has a closed-caption decoder, and his Canoga Park home is equipped with electric gadgets that let him know, for instance, when the doorbell or telephone is ringing. But for Kunin, the devices do not compensate.

At work, the veterinarian worries that someday his hearing-aid batteries will fail during surgery. He must read lips to get the most out of his hearing aids. Wearing the aids, he hears the vowels most clearly, but the consonants are mushy. When someone calls his first name he hears the “an.”

Kunin’s friends tell him that at least he enjoys uninterrupted sleep, but even that is untrue. His ears ring for an hour after he takes off his hearing aids.

Conversation With Keller

If Helen Keller were alive, she probably would agree with Kunin, said Rose Zucker, the mother from North Hollywood who pushed for telecommunications machines for the deaf. Zucker, a prominent activist for the deaf, talked with Keller several years before she died and asked her this question: “If God would give you back your hearing or your sight, which would your choose?”

Keller’s answer shocked Zucker. “Give me my hearing,” Keller responded. “It’s the worst of the two handicaps.”

In simple terms, the deaf are split between the oralists--lip readers who speak--and the signers; advocates of schools of the deaf and those who want deaf students in regular classrooms; those who insulate themselves against the hearing world and those who play by the hearing world’s rules.

The ideological split within the deaf community is nothing new. The debate was waged in Europe long before it crossed the Atlantic and made sparring partners of Alexander Graham Bell, a vigorous proponent of oralism and the husband of a deaf woman, and educators in the Gallaudet family, which was the namesake of America’s first deaf college and favored the use of signing.

Bell’s Opinion

In his memoirs, Bell denounced separate deaf schools that taught signing because, he contended, it encouraged marriage among the deaf and thus the propagation of a deaf race. Most deaf children, however, are born to parents with normal hearing.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, and later his son, believed the deaf should not be handcuffed to an unnatural language that was extremely difficult to learn to speak with any success.

There are a few who refuse to take sides in the oralism vs. sign language debate, the most noteworthy of them being GLAD. The organization believes the deaf should use either method or both if they feel comfortable with them.

At CSUN, a survey of communication methods preferred by deaf students indicated there are those on both sides and in the middle. On campus, 28% of the deaf students are oral, 6% depend primarily on sign language and the rest rely on both.

Reads Lips, Speaks

“I think it’s too bad there are so many deaf students who refuse to deal with the hearing world,” said Grace Linkenbach, 23, a graduate student who reads lips and speaks almost perfectly.

Linkenbach illustrates one of the curiosities inherent in the deaf culture. Raised by hearing parents and educated in the regular school system, Linkenbach said she thought for years that she was normal and was frightened the first time she met another deaf person.

Experts say it is not unusual for deaf children growing up in such a setting to believe the deafness is just a temporary condition they will outgrow as they become adults.

Or, said Jan Kanda, who directs the interpreter training program at CSUN, “I’ve heard some deaf students say, ‘I thought I was the only one in the world who was deaf.’ ”

Linkenbach, like some of the other deaf students, received her first real taste of the deaf culture at the campus. “Culture shock” is the term Linkenbach used to describe her arrival here.

Learns Sign Language

She began learning sign language while fielding questions from deaf students who wanted to know why she was not using it. She also had interpreters at her disposal for the first time in her life, but she viewed them as a crutch.

Linkenbach also was introduced to a deaf community. She noticed many deaf students socialized together, forming a sense of togetherness that even extends to a deaf student government on campus. She said she would never get involved with such a group because it encourages isolation.

On the other hand, some deaf students who might have felt like misfits attending regular public schools blossom here. They say they are thrilled to be around people with common experiences and problems.

Even those who feel good about their deafness often do not have an easy life. The typical deaf worker is underpaid and underemployed.

In California, 71% of the deaf population is unemployed, compared with 7% of the general population. And 34% of the hearing-impaired population in California receives some type of public assistance, compared with 9.2% statewide.

Although the deaf are making gains in employment and more are going to college, the number of deaf professionals appears to be low enough in the Valley and the rest of Los Angeles for many to be acquainted with each other.

The existence of Judith Pachciarz, a deaf physician in Los Angeles (apparently the first deaf woman physician in the country), was brought up repeatedly in interviews.

Misconception on Jobs

Experts attribute part of the lackluster figures to employers who believe hiring the deaf would be too much trouble. It is a misconception that most employed deaf people need interpreters at the workplace, Abrams of the Department of Rehabilitation said. Nonetheless, that attitude has kept many deaf employed in such traditional deaf fields as printing, drafting, landscaping and, more recently, computers.

But, at the McDonald’s restaurant at 22611 Ventura Blvd., the management has given some deaf students their first shot at jobs. A deaf student from Pierce College was hired last year, and soon other deaf students from the college were filling out applications. Four deaf students are working there now.

To communicate, the deaf and the hearing employees have created a simple vocabulary of hand signs to substitute for McDonald’s own burger lexicon. The repertoire includes signs for Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, french fries and Chicken McNuggets.

The transition was easy, said Ruth Rodriguez, who works primarily in the grill area. “My three friends and I have taught the manager some sign language.”

The deaf culture encompasses such disparate things as how the deaf pay for goods and services within their circle (many like bartering, possibly because so many of them are in a low-income bracket) and how long they usually stay at deaf functions (parties tend to last late into the night because face-to-face communication is so valued and superior to using telecommunication devices).

Next to sign language, the bedrock of the deaf culture is the club. There are deaf clubs for dozens of avocations, from stamp collecting to disco dancing, in and around the Valley.

It is not unusual for deaf people visiting a foreign country to ask directions to the local deaf club. Whenever Herb Schreiber, who runs Herbtours, a travel service for deaf people in North Hollywood, books an overseas tour, it always includes encounters with the deaf community. Deafness, some suggest, tends to transcend nationality and ethnic origin as an identity.

Cause of Separateness

The separateness of the deaf is not necessarily a sign of cliquishness. The deaf say that hearing people tend to steer clear of them to avoid the potential embarrassment of not understanding them.

In turn, the deaf sometimes erect walls out of necessity. For instance, there are special religious services for Jews, Catholics, Lutherans and Christians of other denominations in the Valley because it is hard for the deaf to understand what is going on otherwise. Even those who lip-read have problems because the clergyman is often standing too far from the congregation for it to be of any use.

It is no accident that the sign for “boring” stems from the deaf’s experience in churches and synagogues, said Rabbi Alan H. Henkin of Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf.

GLAD’s Rosenkjar suggests something else that is a fundamental part of being deaf today. In the past, the deaf were ashamed of their deafness, he said. But, he notes: “Today it’s different. We’re proud of what we are.”

Tomorrow: The problems encountered by the deaf in communicating with the hearing world.