Speaker 1: Originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3: It used to go to the store at noon time.
Speaker 3: They'd be sitting there playing checkers. You wouldn't hear a
Speaker 3: sound there. Everybody was talking with the hands.
Speaker 2: It didn't stop at checkers. This was a place where
Speaker 2: you could work, gossip with your neighbors, shop for supplies,
Speaker 2: or play a cutthroat game of cards, all without saying
Speaker 2: a word.
Speaker 3: When a boat was coming in, it'd go out on
Speaker 3: the dock and everybody knew just how much fish they'd caught,
Speaker 3: what they caught, and everything. And you wonder why I
Speaker 3: add all information before they get a show.
Speaker 2: This place was called chill Mark. It's a village on
Speaker 2: Martha's Vineyard, tucked away between Rolling Hills and the slate
Speaker 2: Blue Atlantic Ocean. Chill Mark is still around today. It's
Speaker 2: one of the island's six small towns. It's always been
Speaker 2: a small town. The difference is years ago, many of
Speaker 2: Chilmark's residents were deaf. These were farmers, fishermen, husbands, wives,
Speaker 2: normal everyday folks.
Speaker 4: They weren't your deaf neighbors or your deaf friends. They
Speaker 4: were just your friends who happened to be deaf, like
Speaker 4: your other friend crossed the way happened to be tall
Speaker 4: or to be blue eyed.
Speaker 2: So a sign language developed, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language. Everybody
Speaker 2: used it, deaf people and hearing people.
Speaker 5: We didn't think anything of it. We just all it
Speaker 5: was just accepted.
Speaker 2: But by the nineteen fifties this way of communicating in
Speaker 2: chill Mark was gone. Few remembered sign language was once
Speaker 2: the village lingua franca. It seemed to have disappeared without trace,
Speaker 2: until one day, with the assist of a very helpful
Speaker 2: great grandmother, it was rediscovered.
Speaker 1: What size do I remember, remember small girl, Lie, Truth,
Speaker 1: shoe Dog? I remember quite a lot.
Speaker 2: Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Danash Schwartz, and this is I remember all
Speaker 2: the signs. The evolution of language is something that has
Speaker 2: been fascinating to me for a long time, and so
Speaker 2: this deep dive in this episode it just like it
Speaker 2: hit all my buttons. I love this type of story
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 6: I love stories that involve people connecting with their grandparents
Speaker 6: and then that somehow moves are understanding of the world around.
Speaker 6: Go talk to your grandparents. You may end up in
Speaker 6: a future episode.
Speaker 7: Lately call them talk to them. Oh my god, yes. Also,
Speaker 7: what about the secret language aspect, Oh, having a secret
Speaker 7: language with a grandparent.
Speaker 2: Come on, now, a secret language with your grandparents. It's giving, wholesome,
Speaker 2: it's giving sweet, it's giving Grandparents' day. Yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker 8: So when I was seven years old in second grade,
Speaker 8: I was reading a book inside my desk.
Speaker 2: This is Joan Pool Nash. She grew up around chill
Speaker 2: Mark in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 8: It was about Helen Keller and when I got to
Speaker 8: the end of the book, they gave the fingerspelling alphabet.
Speaker 8: So I spent the afternoon teaching myself to fingerspell. God
Speaker 8: knows what was going on in second grade, but nothing exciting.
Speaker 2: Joan didn't know what she was doing was a form
Speaker 2: of sign language. She was just passing the time, and
Speaker 2: she was excited to show off her new scale.
Speaker 8: After school, I walked by my great grandmother's house and
Speaker 8: I showed her the alphabet that I taught myself.
Speaker 2: To Joan's surprise, her great grandmother, Emily Pool, already seemed
Speaker 2: to know fingerspelling, and she knew more than that too.
Speaker 2: She knew signs signs that weren't in that Helen Keller book.
Speaker 8: And she said, oh, I know that one handed alphabet,
Speaker 8: and I know the two handed alphabet, and I know
Speaker 8: all the signs. She immediately started teaching me signs and
Speaker 8: they became a secret language between the two of us.
Speaker 2: Joan was just a little girl, and she didn't realize
Speaker 2: what her great grandmother was teaching her. She didn't think
Speaker 2: it was a sign language for deaf people. After all,
Speaker 2: she didn't see any deaf people using it. Joan figured
Speaker 2: her great grandmother must have picked it up elsewhere.
Speaker 8: I thought, in the back of my brother's boy Scout book,
Speaker 8: there's a book of Indian signs, so that must be it.
Speaker 8: She knows this from when she ran the boy Scout troop.
Speaker 2: But it didn't really matter that she didn't know what
Speaker 2: it was called. Joan was hooked on sign and as
Speaker 2: she grew older, she expanded her knowledge. She learned American
Speaker 2: Sign Language or ASL, and even decided to study ASL
Speaker 2: at school.
Speaker 8: I went to Boston University and people were just then
Speaker 8: starting to look at sign languages as real languages and
Speaker 8: not just made up gestures.
Speaker 2: This was a pretty new approach at this time. In
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies. Many people didn't take sign languages very seriously.
Speaker 2: They didn't consider that they might have their own distinct
Speaker 2: grammars or vocabularies, and that sign languages, like all living languages,
Speaker 2: grow and evolve. It was this last point that the
Speaker 2: academics around Joan were focused on, and early on in
Speaker 2: her studies. While in discussion with some older students, she
Speaker 2: had a revelation.
Speaker 8: The thing that they were most interested in at that
Speaker 8: point was how the sign language that people used now
Speaker 8: clearly had been different at some time. And I was
Speaker 8: listening to them, I realized the signs that they were
Speaker 8: using as old signs were the signs that my great
Speaker 8: grandmother used, and so I knew where the signs came from.
Speaker 8: They came from Martha's vineyard.
Speaker 2: So those weren't boy Scout signs after all. But why
Speaker 2: would her great grandmother know those old signs? Joan called
Speaker 2: up Emily, who was by then in her nineties, and
Speaker 2: asked her reply. Because all these people were deaf.
Speaker 8: It turned out that my great grandmother knew over three
Speaker 8: hundred signs.
Speaker 2: It wasn't an answer Joan was expecting to hear, but
Speaker 2: she knew she needed to learn more. So Joan and
Speaker 2: other linguists went to Martha's Vineyard. They brought along their
Speaker 2: video recording equipment and spent hours and hours with the
Speaker 2: older chill Mark residents asking questions, what did they remember
Speaker 2: about the deaf people who had once lived there? And
Speaker 2: what about this sign language they all seemed to know.
Speaker 8: In my grandfather's generation learned to sign, and they learned
Speaker 8: to sign well, even if they thought they didn't. They
Speaker 8: would be interviewing them and they'd say, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 8: don't remember the sign for horse, but and you'd look
Speaker 8: at them like they horse who showed it to me.
Speaker 2: To these older generations, sign language was second nature, part
Speaker 2: of the experience of living in chill Mark, like fishing
Speaker 2: for striped bass, or raking clams, or taking a dip
Speaker 2: at Mosha Beach.
Speaker 8: None of the people that I videotaped had thought that
Speaker 8: anything was unique about hearing people using sign language.
Speaker 2: Joan had stumbled upon something, a place where hearing people
Speaker 2: and deaf people alike communicated with one another as neighbors,
Speaker 2: as equals. But why chill Mark. If you've never been
Speaker 2: to Martha's Vineyard, you may have heard about it as
Speaker 2: a tourist spot secluded beaches quaint towns, sandy bike trails,
Speaker 2: fresh seafood everywhere. Its year round population is around twenty
Speaker 2: three thousand. In the summer it grows to two hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: The Obamas, David Letterman, Spike Lee, they all vacation there.
Speaker 2: But about two hundred years ago it was pretty quiet,
Speaker 2: pretty rural, and very remote. There weren't many visitors at all,
Speaker 2: let alone celebrity visitors. Chill Mark, located on the southwestern
Speaker 2: part of the island, was especially secluded.
Speaker 4: Chill Mark in the nineteenth century was a relatively tiny
Speaker 4: cluster of buildings, a couple of churches, a town hall,
Speaker 4: a general store or too over the span maybe a
Speaker 4: quarter mile or a half a mile country road. It
Speaker 4: wasn't the end of the world be you could see
Speaker 4: it from there.
Speaker 2: This is bo Van Riper. He's the research librarian at
Speaker 2: the Martha's Vineyard Museum. He and other historians have been
Speaker 2: working with Joan to learn more about the islands and
Speaker 2: specifically chill Mark's history of sign language.
Speaker 4: One of the great ironies of studying the chilmerk deaf
Speaker 4: community is the thing that makes it remarkable that people
Speaker 4: saw deafness just as another way of being human means
Speaker 4: that the official records rarely consistently point out people's deafness
Speaker 4: as a way of describing them. It might have been
Speaker 4: that George or Bob was deaf, but that everybody was
Speaker 4: so used to that that it wouldn't have occurred to them.
Speaker 2: Dimension the fact, deafness can happen for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 2: like from complications during pregnancy or a childhood infection, But
Speaker 2: on Martha's Vineyard it was because of genetics. Some of
Speaker 2: the early white settlers, especially the ones who ended up
Speaker 2: near chill Mark, carried the gene for hereditary deafness. At first,
Speaker 2: it was just a couple of people.
Speaker 4: It's worse noting that for most of the eighteenth century
Speaker 4: the number of deaf people on the vineyard was extremely
Speaker 4: small that you could probably have counted them at any
Speaker 4: point on the fingers of one hand with your thumb
Speaker 4: left over.
Speaker 2: But over time the deaf population grew. Bo estimate that
Speaker 2: at its peak in the mid nineteenth century, the deaf
Speaker 2: population on the island was no more than fifty people,
Speaker 2: But when towns are so small, that's still a sizeable percentage.
Speaker 4: The figure that you often see quoted is one in
Speaker 4: every five chill Workers was deaf at a time when
Speaker 4: the incidence on the mainland was something like one in
Speaker 4: several thousands.
Speaker 2: And on the mainland the deaf population was often treated
Speaker 2: much much differently. During this time, deafness was commonly seen
Speaker 2: as a quote defect and often linked with insanity. At best,
Speaker 2: deaf people were viewed as other. At worst, they were ostracized,
Speaker 2: even people who studied deafness and taught deaf students. People
Speaker 2: like the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, thought
Speaker 2: the ultimate goal for all deaf people should be complete
Speaker 2: assimilation into hearing society. God forbid anyone know you're deaf.
Speaker 2: Bell believed in a method called oralism, which values spoken
Speaker 2: language over other forms, meaning the deaf should learn how
Speaker 2: to read lips and speak aloud. Some even thought sign
Speaker 2: language should be banned altogether. But in a way, Chill
Speaker 2: Mark's isolation saved it from this narrow minded thinking. Oralism
Speaker 2: didn't cross anyone's mind because it didn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: So many community members were deaf brothers, husbands, daughters, neighbors
Speaker 2: that using a sign language was the simplest way for
Speaker 2: everyone to live and work together.
Speaker 4: If you were on the porch of the Childmerth General
Speaker 4: Store and say the middle of the nineteenth century, likely
Speaker 4: what you'd see would be people if they were hearing,
Speaker 4: engaged in conversation with their neighbors, and they'd be simultaneously
Speaker 4: speaking aloud to their hearing neighbors and signing the conversation
Speaker 4: for their deaf neighbors.
Speaker 2: At church, a hearing person would automatically sign the sermon.
Speaker 2: At a town meeting, someone would sign the agenda, so
Speaker 2: both deaf and hearing residents knew when to signal their votes.
Speaker 2: Neither hearing nor deaf people would be shut out of
Speaker 2: any given conversation. All could participate.
Speaker 4: A far as we know. In chill March in the
Speaker 4: nineteenth century into the twentieth century, the death were from
Speaker 4: an economic, political, social point of view, fully integrated members
Speaker 4: of the community. They voted in town meetings, they held
Speaker 4: positions of respect and authority. There was no social distinction
Speaker 4: between deaf and hearing. Having a deaf person look after
Speaker 4: your children, or marry your son or your daughter, or
Speaker 4: be your business partner, your neighbor, your heughmate in church
Speaker 4: was a completely unremarkable thing.
Speaker 2: We don't know exactly when Martha's Vineyard sign language first started,
Speaker 2: but we do know who started it, the deaf residents
Speaker 2: in and near chill Mark, and because of that, it
Speaker 2: was specific to life on a small island. For example,
Speaker 2: its focus on fish.
Speaker 4: Being able to distinguish between multiple species of fish and
Speaker 4: being able to have different signs for the fish that's
Speaker 4: sitting on your dinner plate as opposed to the fish
Speaker 4: that you're trying to catch. Is only useful if you
Speaker 4: make your living fishing, and if most of the people
Speaker 4: you live and work with also make their living fishing.
Speaker 2: Swordfish, cod, scallop. They all had their own signs, signs
Speaker 2: that don't exist in modern day standard asl or at
Speaker 2: least look very different.
Speaker 4: Anybody who's ever seen a scallop swimming underwater will instantly
Speaker 4: recognize why that's the sign for scallop, because that's what
Speaker 4: a scalop looks like. Anybody you seed a swordfish swimming
Speaker 4: with its sharp dorsal fin and sharp tailfin poking out
Speaker 4: of the water, as most chill workers would have, would
Speaker 4: instantly recognize, Oh, yes, of course that's swordfish.
Speaker 2: There were other unique signs too. As Joan continued her research,
Speaker 2: she was especially delighted to find one in particular.
Speaker 8: So the sign for cranberry is just very important to
Speaker 8: me because no one uses it anywhere else except here
Speaker 8: on the mainland. There is no sign for cranberry, and
Speaker 8: so I make it important. Everyone who I teach sign
Speaker 8: language to I always show them the sign for cranberry.
Speaker 2: Here Joan makes the sign, curling the fingers of her
Speaker 2: left hand into a loose fist, her thumb on top.
Speaker 2: With her other thumb and index finger. She flicks at
Speaker 2: the left thumb like you might a marble.
Speaker 8: It's just your thumb, flicking the cranberry off the little
Speaker 8: bush in the water and gathering them up.
Speaker 2: Tailoring the language to the community meant that the people
Speaker 2: who use it, the people of chill Mark, had signs
Speaker 2: for themselves too.
Speaker 1: They had a sign for most everybody.
Speaker 2: The person that's Eric Cottle. He grew up around chill
Speaker 2: Mark when the deaf community was still a notable presence.
Speaker 2: Before he passed away in twenty at the age of
Speaker 2: ninety two. Eric was interviewed by the Martha's Vineyard Museum
Speaker 2: as part of its Oral History project.
Speaker 1: Now the Philip. He lost his hand in the threshing
Speaker 1: machine when he was young, so that you know that
Speaker 1: was Benny Mail.
Speaker 2: As he talks, Eric makes a sign, chopping off his
Speaker 2: right hand.
Speaker 1: With his left and Ernest mayo his was here.
Speaker 2: Now he's hitting his forehead with a flat hand, almost saluting.
Speaker 1: They used to hang made baskets. Can he run into
Speaker 1: somebody's clothes line, but it broke his neck and they
Speaker 1: hit him right across there, So that was a sign
Speaker 1: for Ernst's Male.
Speaker 2: Sign language was so ingrained in life in chill Mark
Speaker 2: that it wasn't limited to use only when a deaf
Speaker 2: person was present. As Bow points out, hearing people in
Speaker 2: chill Mark understood that in many circumstances, signing was the
Speaker 2: preferred method of communication.
Speaker 4: There are stories about farmers who when they were out
Speaker 4: in the field and their wife say wanted to ask
Speaker 4: them some message, bring us and such when you come
Speaker 4: in for supper. They bang on a pod or a
Speaker 4: bell to get the farmer's attention, and then rather than
Speaker 4: hollering across the open field, they'd sign their request and
Speaker 4: he'd sign back.
Speaker 2: And this was even more effective for the towns of
Speaker 2: fishermen out on the water.
Speaker 4: Once people started using internal combustion and engines rather than sales.
Speaker 4: One of the problems they ran up against was that
Speaker 4: the engines were incredibly deafeningly loud, and so if your
Speaker 4: engine was running, it was far easier to just sign, hey,
Speaker 4: how's the fishing today, or are there any cod over
Speaker 4: there by the buoy or whatever, then to try and
Speaker 4: get close enough to holler over the sound of the
Speaker 4: engine or turn off the engine and then have to
Speaker 4: get it started again.
Speaker 2: Jones's father, Everett Pool, was also interviewed by the Martha's
Speaker 2: Vineyard Museum before he passed away, and he too remembered
Speaker 2: his own father, a hearing man, signing with other men
Speaker 2: out on the boats.
Speaker 1: I'd be fishing with my father. We'd pull up alongside
Speaker 1: of another boat, and in those days we had these
Speaker 1: damned old noisy lath benjaance you couldn't hear yourself think,
Speaker 1: you know, and they pull up alongside it. My father
Speaker 1: just talked to the guy with his singers, you know.
Speaker 1: He didn't didn't bother to shout at all.
Speaker 2: There were other unexpected benefits to knowing how to sign,
Speaker 2: like during cutthroat card games with neighboring towns, towns that
Speaker 2: didn't know sign language.
Speaker 1: I remember all the signs. That was nyemonths, I was clubs,
Speaker 1: that was hers, that was spades.
Speaker 2: That's Eric caddle again.
Speaker 1: So we cheat, we'd give each other signs.
Speaker 2: Here, Eric taps his chest.
Speaker 1: You no, I had heart. We were bad.
Speaker 2: Martha's Vineyard sign language was a robust and complex language.
Speaker 2: For years. It was a specific and completely normal part
Speaker 2: of life for its users. But the idea of a
Speaker 2: special sign language that arises to fit the needs of
Speaker 2: a community is not in fact unique to chill Mark.
Speaker 2: Villages in Ghana, Mexico, India, Turkey, Japan, and Indonesia also
Speaker 2: have their own sign languages used by deaf and hearing residents.
Speaker 2: Alike like chill Mark, these communities are often quite small,
Speaker 2: and like chill Mark was once, they are often quite isolated.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was that change becoming less isolated that
Speaker 2: ushered in the demise of Martha's Vineyard Sign language.
Speaker 4: By say eighteen fifty. Several things are coming together that
Speaker 4: change the way deafness happened on the island and the
Speaker 4: change the experience of the chill Mark death.
Speaker 2: That's bo Van Riper again.
Speaker 4: One was that as transportation technology improved, as steamboats replaced
Speaker 4: saale ferries and steamboats became themselves more reliable. It became
Speaker 4: easier for people to go back and forth to the mainland,
Speaker 4: which made it more likely that chill workers would meet
Speaker 4: and become friendly with, and potentially marry and have children
Speaker 4: with people from off the island.
Speaker 2: And these non island people had a different gene pool,
Speaker 2: meaning the chances that your children would be born deaf
Speaker 2: got more and more rare. The other major factor was
Speaker 2: a big change in access to deaf education. In eighteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: Thomas Galladet and Lauren Clerk started what's now known as
Speaker 2: the American School for the Deaf. The school, which is
Speaker 2: located in Hartford, Connecticut, was the first of its kind
Speaker 2: in the US. It offered deaf children around the country
Speaker 2: a chance to live and study together. Most of the
Speaker 2: deaf children on Martha's Vineyard ended up attending there. They
Speaker 2: learned what would become the standard sign language in the US.
Speaker 4: It introduced them to American Sign language, which was being
Speaker 4: developed in those years. It also meant that they came
Speaker 4: home speaking not only the sign language that they were
Speaker 4: used to in chown work, but also this new sign
Speaker 4: language that linked them to a larger, regionwide, eventually nationwide
Speaker 4: community of the death.
Speaker 2: So the incidence of hereditary deafness was lessening ASL was
Speaker 2: coming into its own And let's not forget that oralism,
Speaker 2: where the objective was assimilation into hearing society, was still
Speaker 2: around two all of which sadly meant the eventual downfall
Speaker 2: of Martha's Vineyard Sign language.
Speaker 4: By the middle of the twentieth century, it was effectively
Speaker 4: extinct as an active language, even though it was still
Speaker 4: being used as late as the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Its last native user, a deaf woman named Katie, died
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties, and so knowing sign language, something
Speaker 2: that used to be so commonplace in chill Mark, no
Speaker 2: longer seemed as necessary. Growing up in the nineteen thirties, Jones'
Speaker 2: father Everett remembered thinking exactly that I had.
Speaker 1: No patience with it, you know, another generation. It didn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me why I do that.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: But as a historian, Bo takes a different view.
Speaker 4: Chiel Mark and the Vineyard's reputation as a deaf utopia
Speaker 4: remains a powerful idea because it holds out a lease,
Speaker 4: the potential promise that things as they are are not
Speaker 4: things as they have to be. I can't speak to
Speaker 4: what it would feel like to be a deaf person
Speaker 4: learning about this, but from the outside looking in, I
Speaker 4: can imagine if you'd spent your whole life feeling as
Speaker 4: if hearing society wanted to hold you at arm's length
Speaker 4: and didn't know what to do with you. The idea
Speaker 4: of a place where the deaf were embraced and welcomed
Speaker 4: as humans, as individuals must be an extraordinarily powerful story.
Speaker 2: Today, it's estimated there are around one million deaf people
Speaker 2: in the United States and that almost four percent of
Speaker 2: Americans have difficulty hearing. More than five hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: use ASL to communicate as their native language, and almost
Speaker 2: three quarters of parents with deaf children don't know sign language.
Speaker 2: That's much much different than what deaf kids in chill
Speaker 2: Mark experienced.
Speaker 9: They grow up in homes where there's a lack of
Speaker 9: sign meaning that you know, there's a barrier on their
Speaker 9: ability to connect with their parents.
Speaker 2: Nile DeMarco is a model, actor, producer, and deaf activist.
Speaker 2: We're talking with him through his ASL translator, so that's
Speaker 2: the translator's voice you're.
Speaker 9: Hearing Oftentimes, hearing parents want their babies to be like them,
Speaker 9: which is so natural, but oftentimes that leads to, you know,
Speaker 9: the mistake of say, teaching oral of them and wanting
Speaker 9: them to speak the same way when there might be
Speaker 9: another option available.
Speaker 2: The other option, of course, is sign language, which was
Speaker 2: how Nile grew up.
Speaker 9: Really long before my very first memories, I was learning
Speaker 9: sign language. I had exposure to the language from the
Speaker 9: first day that I opened my eyes, and at home
Speaker 9: I had constant exposure to ASL. Truly, you know, sign
Speaker 9: language is my first language, even though also English.
Speaker 7: Very much feels like my first language in a lot
Speaker 7: of ways.
Speaker 9: They sort of run in parallel.
Speaker 2: Nil is in fact, fourth generation death, and so he
Speaker 2: was raised in a world where deafness is celebrated, not
Speaker 2: misunderstood or feared. In twenty twenty two, he wrote a
Speaker 2: memoir called deaf Utopia. He meant the title to be provocative.
Speaker 9: I knew that somebody hearing people would see that and say,
Speaker 9: that can't be a perfect world, but what if it is?
Speaker 9: It was something that I wanted to achieve with my book.
Speaker 9: I wanted people to really read through it and understand
Speaker 9: the perspective that a deaf person has when we don't
Speaker 9: have the communication barriers. You know, Now I'm able to
Speaker 9: function as a bilingual adult between two languages quite easily,
Speaker 9: and I think people should know that.
Speaker 2: In Deaf Utopia, he tells the story about the moment
Speaker 2: his dad found out one day old Nile and his
Speaker 2: twin brother were both deaf. He raised his fist in excitement,
Speaker 2: he kissed his wife. He was proud. So although Nile
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen eighty nine, in some ways his
Speaker 2: life was similar to deaf kids growing up in chill
Speaker 2: Mark in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 9: You know, my entire households, everyone was accessible to me.
Speaker 9: We could share ideas, and we talk about not only
Speaker 9: current events but on topics. And that's a very different
Speaker 9: story than many other deaf kids out there who are
Speaker 9: born to hearing families. I'm a part of a ten
Speaker 9: percent quite rare subset where my parents are deaf and
Speaker 9: also they you sign language.
Speaker 2: Now. I all used ASL at home, and he went
Speaker 2: to a deaf school and a deaf university where ASL
Speaker 2: was also predominant. So it pretty much wasn't until he
Speaker 2: began his professional life that he was faced with a
Speaker 2: world that didn't know how to sign, and that didn't
Speaker 2: know much about deaf people or deaf culture either.
Speaker 9: It wasn't really until I got into the entertainment industry
Speaker 9: when I started to realize, oh, okay, I'm being reminded
Speaker 9: that I'm deaf. Every day I have to explain that
Speaker 9: I'm daf, whether that was hearing writers, directors, or producers.
Speaker 9: I'm in a smaller minority than is expected to very
Speaker 9: much assimilate with society's design that was really built for
Speaker 9: hearing people.
Speaker 2: It makes him wonder what if some of that chill
Speaker 2: mark culture had seeped into the rest of the country.
Speaker 9: I wish that everyone knew some basic sign language. Oftentimes
Speaker 9: I wonder what if every hearing school out there required
Speaker 9: some basic asl in elementary school. I think it would
Speaker 9: make such a massive difference in the lives of deaf people,
Speaker 9: but more so in how hearing people perceive us and
Speaker 9: our community and how they interact with us every day.
Speaker 9: And that's huge. I mean, it really just it helps
Speaker 9: humanize us in many ways.
Speaker 2: That's why the story of Martha's Vineyard sign language resonates
Speaker 2: so much with him.
Speaker 9: I remember when I learned about it. I really had
Speaker 9: wished that that tiny island was sort of like the
Speaker 9: whole United States, because I thought it must have been
Speaker 9: amazing to have hearing people choose to learn sign language
Speaker 9: instead of speaking with other hearing people. That's a great
Speaker 9: example of how you can build a culture within a
Speaker 9: community that's really for everybody.
Speaker 2: It's a sentiment people on Martha's Vineyard share as well,
Speaker 2: people like Bo and Joan and Jane Slater. Jane is
Speaker 2: ninety two years old now, but as a child in
Speaker 2: chill Mark, she regularly interacted with some of the last
Speaker 2: members of the town's deaf community, like the ladies who
Speaker 2: would stop by her grandmother's house to chat.
Speaker 5: I just remember the women sitting around talking and being
Speaker 5: able to understand a little of it. You rama taught
Speaker 5: me how to say hello, come in, sit down, She'll be.
Speaker 2: Right with you with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: And then they would always try to get me to
Speaker 5: talk to them, so that was fun. They'd get you
Speaker 5: into the conversation.
Speaker 2: I did not know that.
Speaker 10: That was unusual. I mean, I don't know when I
Speaker 10: became aware that people were interested in that, but I
Speaker 10: do feel like I keep that I was born early
Speaker 10: enough to still be part of the chill Mark that
Speaker 10: included some of the chill Mark death They really were
Speaker 10: a part of the community and there was no awareness
Speaker 10: of them being different, and I think that really made
Speaker 10: chill Mark a special place.
Speaker 2: I have to confess as a child, I was one
Speaker 2: of those Midwestern child who just thought that Martha's vineyard
Speaker 2: was an actual vineyard and I think in my mind
Speaker 2: owned by Martha Stewart.
Speaker 8: Same.
Speaker 2: So this has been illuminating for me in many many
Speaker 2: ways learned episode. I just learned so much this episode specifically.
Speaker 7: I also loved how a person's worst accident becomes their
Speaker 7: sign language name like that to me was wild, Like
Speaker 7: dude gets his hand lopped off by a threshold a
Speaker 7: sudden everyone minds losing a hand, like yeah, that's Benny Mayhew.
Speaker 7: But can you imagine that we will remember you by
Speaker 7: your trauma.
Speaker 6: I like the mention of Galadet's School for the Deaf.
Speaker 6: I have a quick Galadet School for the Deaf story.
Speaker 6: I almost told this when we were at the Super
Speaker 6: Bowl because it's a football story.
Speaker 5: Us.
Speaker 6: So I played on the club football team in college
Speaker 6: at Duke, and that don't picture college football picture like idiots.
Speaker 6: There were only like three other teams in the region
Speaker 6: that we would play, and every year we would go
Speaker 6: up to Washington, d C. Where Galadet had a team,
Speaker 6: and they were like a legit football team, and again
Speaker 6: we were not, and so we got crushed. I think
Speaker 6: it was forty four to twelve and forty six to fourteen.
Speaker 6: But the thing that happened both years which amazes me.
Speaker 6: Every time when they wanted to hike the ball, they
Speaker 6: would beat a big drum and they would feel the
Speaker 6: vibrations and they would know that's how to go. And
Speaker 6: by the end of the game we had all become
Speaker 6: accustomed to this. And one time they went on the
Speaker 6: set drum beat both years and we all dove off
Speaker 6: sides on the first one.
Speaker 4: That's amazing.
Speaker 7: I absolutely love that story. Guys' ass is handed to
Speaker 7: you by a drum beat. Also, I was thinking about
Speaker 7: when I was in high school, one of my best friends,
Speaker 7: he taught me sign language, but just the alphabet right,
Speaker 7: And then there was a bunch of cute girls in
Speaker 7: his history class and they also spoke sign language, so
Speaker 7: he was able to like win over all this favor
Speaker 7: with them by helping them. He was really smart. So
Speaker 7: he would cheat in history class and they would be
Speaker 7: sitting there doing sign luggage and the teacher had no idea.
Speaker 7: So when I saw them doing the secret languages, I
Speaker 7: was like, oh, I've seen that. That totally works. So yeah,
Speaker 7: by the way, if you'd like I cast this one as.
Speaker 1: Well, Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah please, So if you if you guys were curious,
Speaker 7: I did. It took me a second because I was like,
Speaker 7: how would I cast this? Who feels right for Martha's
Speaker 7: Vineyard other than Martha Stewart. So I went with For
Speaker 7: Joan pool Nash, I thought Mary Steinburgeon just seemed right right.
Speaker 7: I don't know why, it just seemed right. And then
Speaker 7: for Bowen the historian, I thought Michael Sheen right. I
Speaker 7: don't know why, but Michael Sheen just felt right for him, right.
Speaker 7: And then for Nile DeMarco, keeping that vibe, I thought,
Speaker 7: Barry Keegan, right, you get this cool deaf activist. He
Speaker 7: seems like I had done integrity. And then finally for
Speaker 7: the ninety two year old local Jane Slater, I thought,
Speaker 7: let's give it up to a legend Carol Burnett.
Speaker 2: Anytime Carol Burnett's coming on screen.
Speaker 7: I'm happy right, and you know she used to do
Speaker 7: sign language every episode of her show, but it was
Speaker 7: a specific little sign she gave to her. I think
Speaker 7: I was her mother, and she would always signal with
Speaker 7: her hand to her mother at the end of every episode.
Speaker 7: It was like their own little sign language. So I thought, boom,
Speaker 7: we got to honor that.
Speaker 2: This is perfect. Zaren, you did it again.
Speaker 7: Oh thank you, David.
Speaker 6: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 6: This show is hosted by Danish Wartz, Saren Burnette, and
Speaker 6: me Jason English. Our producer is Josh Fisher. Day's episode
Speaker 6: was written by Joanna Sokolowski and Julia Smith, Additional writing
Speaker 6: by Marisa Brown, editing and sound design by Josh Thame,
Speaker 6: mixing and mastering by Beheed Fraser. Our story editors are
Speaker 6: Abby Stone and Marisa Brown. Oral history clips with Eric Coddle,
Speaker 6: Everett Poole, Sidney Harris, and Jane Slater are excerpted from
Speaker 6: interviews conducted with Lindsey Lee, Martha's Vineyard Museum oral history curator,
Speaker 6: courtesy of the Martha's Vineyard Museum. Couldn't have done it
Speaker 6: with value. Original music by Elise McCoy. Research and fact
Speaker 6: checking by Meredith Danko, Austin Thompson, Joanna Solkeolowski, and Julius Smith.
Speaker 6: Joe logo by Lucy Quintinia. I'm your Executive producer Very
Speaker 6: Special Episodes is the production of iHeart Podcasts.