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00:25:34
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00:25:34
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Transcription: [00:25:34]
{SPEAKER name="William Ennis/John Ennis (interpreter)"}
but finally my parents decided to move to Austin, Texas, live in the same town where I could go to the residential school, and maybe it was only just a few blocks, I can't really remember because it was very close.

[00:25:48]
When I go to school I thought oh my parents are gonna do this to me again. I don't wanna go to school and live in the dorm with all those boys, all lined up in those beds in a row. Row after row, I could remember that.

[00:26:00]
And my mom said "no, no, no, that's not, you're gonna come up home again this afternoon after school."

[00:26:05]
I went up to the long stairways, I remember kicking and fighting, when I got to the door I put both feet on each side. I didn't want to go in. My mother finally got me in.

[00:26:16]
After that I realized that I just live right off campus I can just walk right back and forth as like a day student. I was a day student until I was about 15. I guess that's enough for that story I'll tell you the rest of my life, huh?

[00:26:32]
{SPEAKER name="Jo Radner"}
Good lives. Debbie, would you like to share the story about, the day you walked to school by yourself?
That's my favorite.

[00:26:45]
{SPEAKER name="Debbie Sonnenstrahl/John Ennis (interpreter)"}
Ahh I was gonna say something else.

{SPEAKER name="Jo Radner"}
Oh, okay go ahead. Later on.

[00:26:49]
{SPEAKER name="Debbie Sonnenstrahl/John Ennis (interpreter)"}
Well I'll tell that later okay? Right thank you um, I want to share this story with you.

[00:26:59]
I was born deaf and came from a large hearing family. My family consisted of my mom, my dad, my grandmother, my grandfather, my great aunt and my brother and all of them were hearing. I was the only deaf member.

[00:27:15]
My father didn't know how to cope with my deafness. He was a baby doctor himself, he was a pediatrician but yet he still didn't know how to cope with me. And, he wrote a letter to, John Tracy Clinic which advocated oralism,

[00:27:31]
and they told him to talk, talk, talk to the child. Which all the family did and I grew up without knowing one word of signs and I asked, started my schooling education at oral school for the deaf and then went to a public school in seventh grade, graduated there at twelfth grade.

[00:27:53]
Now I want to tell you my experiences how I entered into the deaf world. It's really a different experience, like the difference between day and night, I remember it very well.

[00:28:05]
My girlfriend from an oral school, a day program said, "Debbie you're deaf, you belong to the deaf world. I'm gonna show you where you really belong." And she took me to a deaf, a fair and the first time saw all these hands flying, the flying fingers. I wasn't used to it.

[00:28:26]
And then my parents said "I think it would be a good idea for us to visit Gallaudet College, it's a college for deaf students." I said "Gallaudet, Gallaudet deaf college, me? No way, I'm going to a hearing girls college, Goucher in Baltimore."

[00:28:50]
I remember I'd taken the test, I was ready for that college but my parents, they really love me and sometimes I think they are protective but they love me and wanted me to be happy