Back Story, in brief

Midsummer, 1973: my parents and sisters were living in Texarkana, Texas. Allison was three-and-a-half and Michelle was two-and-a-half. I was in utero, my parents expecting me in a few weeks. My mother, then, was very pregnant and it being July in east Texas, she was very hot. Fortunately, being a teacher at the community college, she was on summer break.

Allison had been sick for a few days with symptoms that suggested she had the flu – high fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, headache – but her sleepiness and lethargy, as well as her lack of improvement, impelled my mother to call the doctor. Bring her in to the clinic, they said, so she brought her in.

Dr. Rory – our fabulous, chain-smoking, tall pediatrician who kept his glasses perched atop his shiny bald head – listened to my mom describe Allison’s symptoms as he lay her down on the examination table. Then, in one simple but crucial move, he lifted her head. And there it was – her knees lifted as he pulled her chin to her chest. I think it may be Spinal Meningitis, he said, and he was right.

She spent ten days in the hospital and came home weak and frail. She wobbled a little when she walked, my mother noticed. And another thing, was she hearing everything okay? A week later, at an otolaryngologist in Shreveport, Louisiana, Allison’s hearing was tested and she was diagnosed with profound hearing loss. She was getting nothing from her left ear, and only a tiny bit from her right. There’s nothing you can do, they told my parents. It’s permanent. Go home and come back to see us in six months.

Oh, and my mother was still pregnant, but as she claims to this day, I would just have to wait.

My parents left Shreveport devastated, of course, but they did not take the doctor's advice. They did not sit back and do nothing. Instead they went to the Callier Center for Communication Disorders in Dallas, who suggested putting hearing aids on both ears immediately, which they did. My parents contacted The John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles, and my mother started working with them via correspondence. Allison started going to a deaf class at the Temple Memorial Treatment Center in Texarkana, and she began working with a speech therapist. My parents contacted everyone they could think of and even considered moving to L.A.

In a stroke of good luck, though, one of my parents’ friends, a woman who knew of Allison’s situation, was in the right place at the right time. Listening to the radio one night in her lake house in Arkansas, she heard a story about Lil Blakesly, a deaf educator who had just moved to Hot Springs, 90 minutes away. She was working at nearby Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, and had established a preschool for deaf children. The friend wrote Lil’s name down and passed it along to my mother.

My mother called Lil and Lil said she’d drive down to Texarkana to meet the family. How’s Saturday? Lil asked. My mother said Saturday wasn’t good because she was having a baby. How’s Monday?

So I was born on Saturday and Lil came on Monday.

Lil was perfect. It was a miracle, my mom says. So my parents agreed to close in the garage and start a small, informal preschool for Allison, Michelle, and three other kids, and Lil agreed to commute five days a week to be their teacher.