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Transcription: [00:11:40]
{SPEAKER name="Jo Radner"}
Lilly would you like to share something with us about your family?

[00:11:43]
{SPEAKER name="Lilly Burke"}
Yeah!

[00:11:44]
{SPEAKER name="Jo Radner"}
Sure, please stand up if you feel more comfortable

[00:11:49]
{SPEAKER name="Lilly Burke/John Ennis (interpreter)"}
I have a deaf family like Barbara's, deaf parents, deaf sister, and and ah and one grandmother is hearing.
[00:12:00]
The rest of us are all deaf, she's an outcast I guess, I don't know.
[00:12:05]
But went to a deaf school in Europe - Vienna, Austria, was raised there.
[00:12:12]
Then the war came, broke out, and all our family got together and came to America.
[00:12:18]
We had a hard time getting into America because the four of us deaf, that time the United States was a little in the midst of a war--

[00:12:26]
[[coughing]]

[00:12:29]
--between Europe and the US, and then they have to take the responsibility of bringing in 4 deaf immigrants.

[00:12:36]
Well we got into the United States.

[00:12:38]
[[pause]]

[00:12:43]
My mom and my uncle were working and I got into school, and it was an oral school.

[00:12:48]
Some people ask me "Why, if you have a deaf family did you go to an oral school?" because my parents didn't know much about it really, they didn't know any better.

[00:15:56]
People said "This a good school, a real good school, oral school is good", so my parents said ok, we will put 'em in there.

[00:13:03]
I knew German at home and German sign language. Cause I got into school and I went there and I learned English, and I taught my parents, my mother, I would sometimes teach her the signs.

[00:13:16]
My family did not have any problem communicating at home but at school its really tough with the oral

[00:13:21]
and I had deaf friends who could sign, that I would hang around with. I guess that's all.

[00:13:26]
{SPEAKER name="Jo Radner"}
Thank you.

[00:13:27]
[[clapping]]

[00:13:30]
{SPEAKER name="Jo Radner"}
Don, how 'bout you?

[00:13:32]
{SPEAKER name="Don Pettingill"}
I lost my hearing when I was five from the German measles. There was no psychological imbalance

[00:13:42]
because my father was very hard of hearing. And I had eight brothers and sisters and every time I started feeling sorry for myself because my brothers and sisters were picking on me.

[00:13:55]
And I'd say "They were picking on me because I'm deaf". And my brothers and sisters would say, "So what you're deaf, so what?"

[00:14:02]
And I grew up with a very healthy attitude about my deafness. But my mother never really accepted my deafness.

[00:14:11]
You know how mothers are. She was always trying to find ways to get my hearing back. I remember when I was little

[00:14:21]
they took me to a doctor, some witch doctor, who used snake oil in my ear. And then those Indians over there remind me of something else, they took me out to the Indian reservation and had the medicine man
[00:14:41]

Transcription Notes:
Jan DeLap is the moderator. Lilly Burke was introduced on one of the first recordings.