Deaf Folk Conquer their Handicap

“They are wonderful workers and most popular with everyone. After only a week here they were picking up easily all that was said to them and readily making themselves understood as well.” So observed a Ministry of Works officer at the Devonport naval base, where recently two young deaf men started work. He was referring to Rex Chester and John Phillipps, healthy and strong, intelligent, good-looking – and deaf. Their deafness, total in John’s case and virtually so in Rex’s, means too, of course, that they are not able to speak as clearly – since speech is learned through hearing – as the people around them.

Both are now aged 24. Rex and John, who have been friends since their childhood days at Auckland’s School for the Deaf, are at present working, the one as handyman, the other as skilled labourer, on the new dental block being built at the Naval Base. Rex, an Aucklander, is actually a trained electroplater, but for the present anyway prefers to work at an outside job. For John, member of a Helensville farming family, working outdoors just “comes naturally”.

...

Skilled Driver

Besides undertaking ordinary jobs in this way, the young men participate also in a variety of other activities, including dancing, and each is a skilled driver of his own car.

Dancing, incidentally, is enjoyed by many deaf people, and with full orchestra at that. A big bass drum is an essential orchestra-component though, for the deaf dance not by sound but by vibration.

Rex and John are both good shots too, and, with parties of hearing friends, enjoy many deer and rabbit-shooting expeditions.

Are these two exceptional, I wondered, among the folk who suffer the daunting disability of severe deafness? It is a disability which can have a devastating effect, of course – unless conscious effort is made to counter it – of cutting its victims off completely from communication with their fellows and of isolating them in a lonely, limiting world.

The people most seriously thus affected are not so much those who have “gone deaf” at some time after speech has been fully acquired, but those who do not remember ever being able to hear at all. Among these, I found, the attitude displayed by Rex Chester and John Phillipps is not really exceptional, for there are indeed many deaf, determined, like them, to “make the best of it,” who face up to their handicap with purpose and courage. The average citizen hears little about them. “They are very independent,” I was later told.

Sports Hall

On a recent Saturday, I was lucky enough to meet members of the Auckland Deaf Society at a working bee they were holding to improve the grounds of the city’s Deaf Welfare Centre. The centre, incidentally, is a very fine building – it has the biggest sports hall in Auckland, floor area 110 by 60 feet. It was erected six years ago for welfare and social purposes chiefly through the efforts of that public-spirited body, of hearing people, the Friends of the Deaf.

With numbers of those busy that morning with shovel and wheelbarrow I was able to converse very well, for their speech is in many cases not difficult to understand if they are given close attention. They understood me mainly through lip-reading and the astonishing “quickness” with which they can interpret facial expression, gesture and so on.

Among those whom I thus met were Mr Laurie Schischka, president of the Auckland Deaf Society, an engineer who runs his own business in Auckland; Mr John Hunt, a printer – and a co-editor of the newly inaugurated quarterly magazine, the New Zealand Deaf News – who came to the Dominion two years ago from Southampton, England; and Mr Stewart Smith, supervisor, postal branch, at the Chief Post Office, Auckland.

Mr Smith is also an indoor bowling champion (bowls are a favourite sport among deaf people), being a holder of North Island pairs and fours titles and winner, in 1962, of the New Zealand fours. He was skip too, of all these teams.

Another personality met was Bob Scott – “not the footballer,” he chuckled. Mr Scott, secretary of many years of the Wellington Deaf Club and now living in Auckland, is a maker of car batteries by trade. He is also a keen chess player – a former New Zealand champion, in fact.

Among the workers also were 18-year-old Terry Siviter, who has a job in a clothing factory and plays rugby football; athlete Norman Norris and his pretty fiancée, Colleen Carey, who is in the mail order department of a department store; and a solidly built young Maori, William Biddle, from Turangi, Taupo, who is employed at the Auckland City Council’s compost plant.

Rhythmic

William, who does most of his conversing by means of eloquent facial expression and a gracefully rhythmic sign language of his own, weights 17 stone. Plans are now afoot to train him as a weight-lifter and he may then be included in the team of deaf contestants who will leave New Zealand in October to compete in the “Silent Sports” to be held this year in Washington D.C.

These sports, conducted every four years, are the “Deaf Olympics.” They were last held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1960, when New Zealand’s deaf wrestler John McRae, of Auckland, won a bronze medal.

Only a small team – about half-a-dozen – represented New Zealand that year, but the 1964 team, it is hoped, will be much larger.

The “Olympics” question, along with other matters pertaining to international sport for the deaf, was fully discussed the other evening at a Welfare Centre meeting. More than 30 people were present and there was much business to get through, but the meeting was very different from most of its kind. It was conducted – in silence, for the deaf when talking among themselves do not use their voices but combine vivid signs, gestures and play of features with “lip-language,” the speaker shaping his words silently for his “hearers” to lip-read.

Difficult

Lip-reading, incidentally, is a very difficult skill to learn and to perfect it. I was told by the Deaf Centre Welfare officer, Mr J.C. Bates, years of practice are required. Specially adept at it though are two young women whom I met – Mrs Pauline Sedon, who was among those at the working bee, and attractive Miss Jennifer Shearer, a school dental nurse with whom I talked later in her sole-charge clinic at Arahoe School, New Lynn, Auckland.

Their inability to take part in Church services is a matter of deep regret for many deaf people, Mrs Sedon also noted, and she would dearly like to see special services introduced for them here as is done in England.

For Jennifer Shearer, her deafness presents a challenge which she has met with outstanding success. Without her hearing aid she hears nothing and even with it she has only 20 per cent of normal hearing. Such a handicap might well have been thought to rule out a school dental nursing as a career, but it was work that Jennifer had set her heart on.

When given the chance to try was given her, therefore, by the Health Department (not without some natural misgivings as to whether she could really manage it) she tackled the necessary studies and training schedule with characteristic industry, determination and courage. And she was immeasurably helped, she says, by the kindness and encouragement she invariably received from everyone at the dental school.

Numbers of varied occupations are successfully engaged in by deaf people. Both sexes work well in factories – noises, of course, do not distress them. Mail sorting is also open to those suitably qualified and girls often make very good dressmakers.

A surprise, though, was to learn that many deaf people make excellent drivers and that it is now possible for a deaf driver to hold every class of vehicle licence except that issued for passenger service vehicles. Several of the experienced and valued men who have been driving heavy metal trucks for years in Auckland’s hectic traffic are totally deaf, or nearly so.

Large numbers of deaf folk also drive their own cars. They pass a tough test to gain their licences, they know and practice their road rules with the utmost thoroughness and it is rare indeed – practically unheard-of, in fact – for them to be involved in accidents.

When making my inquiries about the deaf and their jobs, I found that all employers contacted spoke highly of their deaf employees as “excellent workers.”

One reason for their excellence, of course, is that they are not tempted to waste time in petty distractions – idle chatter, for instance. More important is the quality of concentration they bring to their work. All their lives they’ve had to concentrate – to get their meaning across to others, to master difficulties which do not exist for the ordinary man and woman. In a day when the ability to concentrate is – in general – sadly lacking, this is an attribute which serves them well.