How is It To Live in a Silent World? by Michael

How is It To Live in a Silent World? by Michael - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

Sophia Gallaudet would be my partner at dinner. Her world as a child was silent, though her thoughts and expressions were vivid and intense. Her accomplishments in a world so closed off were just the opposite- open to others, unselfish and always wanting to break through barriers. Sophia was born deaf in a time when listening to radios and hearing an opera were just not possible for a person with a hearing impairment.

Sophia Gallaudet and my mother share something in common- a profound hearing loss and a drive to let nothing stand in their way. My mother has suffered from profound hearing loss almost her entire life and did not obtain hearing aids until she was thirty-seven years old. For most of my youth I have humbly been her ears during conversations, answered for her at drive through windows and helped her have phone conversations when people have spoken too quietly. I have been her advocate and her helper whenever she has needed me.

I would like to ask Sophia about her son who also helped her through difficult times and inspired her to accomplish great things in her life. Just like I am a hearing child with a deaf parent, Sophia Gallaudet’s son, Edward, was one of eight children who all had the ability to hear. After her husband passed away, he encouraged Sophia to work at his Columbia School for the Deaf and Blind in Washington, D.C, where she eventually became head matron. This school went on to be our country’s first college for the deaf and blind. I, too, have encouraged my mother to continue her plight as an educator and advocate for hard of hearing children. She has been a teacher in the public school system for almost twenty years and has requested to have these children placed in her classroom.

Sophia would feel a sense of comradery with my own mother, as I am sure that I would feel with her son who worked side by side with her all those years. She would be impressed that my mother was awarded the Congress-Bundestag Scholarship to study abroad and represent our nation in Germany and that she won the Oticon Focus on People Award for her advocacy for deaf children in schools. I would ask her how she felt in a silent world when so many others could speak and hear. Mostly, I would like to know her feelings toward her own son who encouraged her to push on just as I have for my own mother. To step back in time and have dinner with Sophia Gallaudet would answer these questions that I have wondered for so long.