Today is deaf hero day!! I have chosen Juliette Gordon Low as one of my favorite of all time deaf/ hard-of-hearing people. As a former Girl Scout leader, I know her bio well. She was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1860. An early feminist, she shunned boring needlework for sports. At that time southern belles were not permitted to run or exert themselves. One time when she was a teenager, she gathered a group of girls in a men's gym, locked the doors, then had them all strip to their bloomers, so they could play basketball in secret.As a young adult she suffered chronic ear infections that made her deaf in one ear after a doctor poured a nitrate solution into her ear canal to heal the infection. Instead, it burned out her eardrum. When she was married in 1886, a piece of rice lodged in the other ear, became infected, then pierced her eardrum, and deafened her on that side too.
Later in life she befriended Lord Baden-Powell in England and his sister Agnes, who developed Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. Juliette liked the idea so much that she started Girl Scouting in America. To read more about Juliette Gordon Low, go to this link--
http://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/history/low_biography/ Today Girl Scouting places an emphasis on diversity awareness, tolerance, and equal opportunity, no doubt because of the early influence of their deaf founder. Juliette Gordon Low was an inspiration to woman and to late-deafened people.
3 comments:
I had no idea she was deaf! This makes me want to read about ALL the noteworthy contributions deaf people have made to society!
Cindy
I was a GS leader for eight years, so I knew about her. She was oral of course, because she was late-deafened, but she didn't have hearing aids. In the 1800s, there wasn't the debate about oralism like there is today. I am reading a book called Great Deaf Americans. It's inspirational, and historically interesting. Many people who are called Hard of Hearing today would have been called deaf in the 1800s. I have a strong personal opinion that the deaf/Deaf need to be more unified and drop the distinctions between who is deaf/Deaf/hard-of-hearing. We all struggle with the same communication issues to varying degrees.
I had no idea she was deaf either, and my admiration for her is increased. How much more difficult it must have been to accomplish all she did. Thanks for the link!
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