13

Bernard and Stefi

“BERNARD’S TEACHER is worried that he is so quiet,” Vicki reported to me one evening.

“He’s shy,” I said. “But he talks plenty here at home.”

“I know,” Vicki said, frowning. “Let’s record him talking and singing and give Mrs. Barbara Kutner, the nursery school teacher, the tapes,” she said. It was a good idea. We started that evening, recording him during dinner. Afterward, we rerecorded him as he sat on the family room rug playing with his toy trucks, talking and singing songs.

The next day, we shared what we’d recorded with Mrs. Kutner, who was surprised to hear Bernard’s voice on the tape.

Bernard chatting with grandparents Jack and Irene Bernstein (Vicki's parents) with great grandmother Sadie Stutson in the background.

“I think you should get his hearing tested nonetheless,” she told us. Vicki was offended. Was the teacher suspecting Bernard of hearing problems just because we were deaf and despite the evidence on the tape? “Given our family history of deafness,” I said, “I have to agree. Let’s get the test done again. It can’t hurt.”

This time, the results showed that Bernard had a significant hearing loss somewhere between moderate and severe, beginning with about a 55-decibel loss at the beginning of the speech range, a curve downward across the speech range, and upward after the speech range. This meant that he could probably hear deep voices, usually men, within two or three feet.

“But by all means,” the NTID audiologist said, “see another audiologist and compare the results.” We took his advice and made a second appointment, this time with an audiologist in an ear, nose, and throat practice.

In the waiting room, Bernard sat on Vicki’s lap as I leafed through an issue of Life magazine from the coffee table in front of me. The audiologist came, gave us a perfunctory greeting, took little Bernard’s hand, and walked away with him, out of the room and down the hall. I leaped to my feet and quickly jogged after them. “Please wait,” I said, “until after we’ve chatted first!”

“We’ll chat when the test is done,” he said.

“Well, I will come with you to the testing room then,” I said.

“No, you stay in the waiting room,” he said and then turned and walked away, dragging Bernard with him by the arm. Bernard looked back at me, obviously frightened. By now, Vicki was with me in the hallway. We both stood there, stunned. Should we chase the audiologist and wrestle with him for our boy?

A few minutes later, the audiologist returned with Bernard. “He’s uncooperative. I can’t test an uncooperative child.”

“Repeat the test, but with us in the room!” I said.

“That’s not how we do it in this office,” he said.

“I insist!” I said, and the audiologist had to relent.

Bernard sat on Vicki’s lap while I watched. The audiologist was clearly rude and uncommunicative. He insisted that Bernard, wearing headsets, respond to him when he heard sounds. At first, the audiologist handed Bernard an abacus with colored beads for him to move from one side to the other each time he heard a sound. Bernard was unresponsive and uncooperative. It was clear that our son was frightened and didn’t know what was expected of him. As tactfully as possible, I told the audiologist that it was not working at all and asked if I could help out. He waved his hand as if to say, “Fine!”

I put a handful of pennies in my hand and told Bernard, “Let’s play a game. When you hear a sound, you let me know, and I’ll give you a penny.” Bernard was suddenly cooperative, and he collected a lot of pennies. I could tell that the audiologist was amazed, but of course, did not admit it.

“I’ll share the test results with the doctor, who will, in turn, share them with you.” He left us, and we were relieved to be done with him.

Vicki, Bernard, and I went into the doctor’s office and waited for what seemed like forever. Finally, he ducked in to speak with us, but almost immediately his secretary called him out to see a sales clerk, leaving us again alone, waiting and wondering. After a while, the doctor came back as if in a rush. “I’m sorry, folks; I have lunch to go to with one of my associates.”

I said, “Hey, wait a minute. We must talk with you.” He grudgingly sat down and wrote a note saying that Bernard had “inner ear deafness,” which we didn’t understand.

“What is ‘inner ear’ deafness?” I asked. He said nothing, but stood and glanced at the door. “Folks, I really have to go. You should make an appointment with another audiologist, at the hearing and speech clinic.” Then he was gone.

Astounded, Vicki and I walked out with Bernard. We hadn’t been treated with such disrespect in a long time.

Vicki and I looked at each other and asked, “So that is what hearing parents experience when discovering their child is deaf?” Many young parents back then, and even today, have received such biased information from audiologists or do not receive appropriate support from them. We later met with an audiologist, Mrs. Kendra Marasco, at the Al Sigl Hearing and Speech Center. She was very warm and friendly, and we loved her. She determined that Bernard would benefit from a hearing aid and that he would need a regular twelve-week training on how to use his hearing aid and to work on some parts of his speech. In each session, Vicki observed the training through a one-way window. A three-and-a-half-year-old hard of hearing boy was also in the “class.” After five weeks, Mrs. Marasco told us there was no need to continue with the training since Bernard was doing very well. She also mentioned that she was impressed with his language development, which, at that time, was equivalent to that of a six-year-old. Clearly, Bernard was exposed to both spoken and sign languages, while the other boy’s hearing parents used only spoken language and didn’t know sign language.

Bernard was fitted with hearing aids and continued to attend the nursery school. At the same time, because Vicki’s mom had enrolled in the John Tracy Clinic Correspondence Course for new parents with young deaf children and had found it helpful, Vicki signed up to use the course with Bernard. John Tracy was the deaf child of the legendary actor Spencer Tracy and his wife, Louise Tracy. They founded the correspondence program after realizing how many other young parents were struggling to know how to raise and educate their deaf children.

The following year, we enrolled him in the privately run two-room Farm School that had very small classes. He was not happy and was uncommunicative and uncooperative with the teachers. Every morning, we had to drive him to school because he refused to get on the school van. It got to be so bad that the teacher suggested Bernard see a child psychologist. Naturally, we were affronted but decided to find one. After a few private sessions with an excellent child psychologist, we were told to let Bernard attend a public school. “He’s advanced academically,” the psychologist told us.

“But how will he fare socially in a big public school?” we wondered. Just the thought of him being ostracized and confused in a large school filled us with panic. “He’s so shy!” we said. But the psychologist suggested Bernard’s social skills would come with ease as he developed his academic skills in a school better matched to his great potential. As we discovered later on, the psychologist was right.

Bernard began first grade at Baird Road Elementary School near our home. Its truly wonderful principal Mr. Ted O’Brien took Bernard under his wing; Bernard benefited from his nurturing guidance. Having been trained as a counselor, Mr. O’Brien succeeded in encouraging Bernard to become comfortable with interacting with his classmates and teachers.

Another stroke of luck took place when Mr. O’Brien received a grant to establish a new program, Project Challenge, for gifted children. Bernard was selected to participate in the project with his three best friends from our neighborhood. While the other students worked in regular classrooms, he and his friends were pulled out periodically to participate in more complex and challenging assignments, such as doing research and going to the library. The selected students were called “the challengees” and the teachers “the challengers.” The project continued throughout Bernard’s elementary years.

By 1974, when Bernard was five years old, Vicki had had three more failed pregnancies. Each pregnancy had come with joy, trepidation, fervent hoping and praying, and then crushing disappointment. Neither of us wanted Bernard to be an only child. Not only did we know he’d be a wonderful, caring older brother, but we wanted him to have the benefit of having a sibling. Even though I’d been an only child myself, growing up in residence at CID had made me feel I had many brothers, and Vicki had two younger sisters.

Our Rochester friends Bill and Mary Ann Darnell and Harry and Pat Scofield had adopted their children with much success, so we felt this was our answer. We would adopt.

The Monroe County Social Services housed a public adoption agency. Within the first few months of working with the agency, Vicki got pregnant for the fifth time. We decided that, if it were a girl, we would name her Stephanie, after Vicki’s maternal grandmother, Sadie Stutson. The agency told us the adoption process couldn’t be continued until after the baby was born. Vicki, who had a premonition her pregnancy wouldn’t be successful, asked the caseworker, “What if I lose this one?” The caseworker, somewhat flippantly and coldly we thought, said simply, “Well, if you lose it, come back.” We decided not to go back there ever again.

Vicki’s premonition proved correct, and her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Not wanting to return to that public agency, we checked with an attorney we knew, Joseph Kaufman, for a recommendation. He suggested a private adoption agency, Northhaven, next to Rochester General Hospital (Northside). Anne Lane, the social worker, was very approachable and sensitive to our needs. We participated in a deeply comprehensive review process that included individual interviews as well as home visits. We initially wanted a baby boy younger than Bernard. The Northhaven agency registered our name with their network of adoption agencies in five states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. We were advised that due to New York’s liberal abortion policy and because many unwed mothers were beginning to keep their babies without disabilities, it would be difficult to locate a baby within months. We told the social worker that we would consider a deaf baby boy. That helped speed up the search process that otherwise would have taken three to five years.

Fifteen months later, in May 1975, Anne Lane informed us that a fifteen-month-old hard of hearing baby girl, Stephanie Diane Clark, was available through an adoption agency, the Jewish Family and Children’s Service in Boston. A girl? They mailed us a photograph of her, a pudgy and beautiful little toddler. We were immediately smitten.

“Would you like to have a sister?” we asked Bernard. We’d always planned that we’d adopt a boy.

“Sure,” he said easily. “I just want someone to play with. I want to meet her!” Maybe we would get our Stephanie after all.

We were initially advised to plan a few trips to Boston to first meet with the social worker and the foster mother with whom Stephanie lived. We were at first disappointed because we’d imagined bringing her home right away. But the agency wanted to be sure that we would be the right fit for her. At that time, we had plans to drive to Maryland, where I would participate with the Rochester bowling team in the Eastern Deaf Bowlers Association tournament. To kill two birds with one stone, we added the Boston trip after the bowling tournament. Bernard rode with us as we drove to Stamford, Connecticut, to visit our friends Louis and Doris Blanchard, and then we stayed overnight at Richard and Arlene Thompson’s home in Boston.

The next morning, it was pouring rain. The three of us, Vicki, Bernard, and I, dashed through the downpour into the adoption agency to meet with another social worker, Ruth Wolf.

“Would you like to meet Mary Nickerson and the baby?” Ruth asked us, taking our wet coats and hanging them up on a hook by the door. Yes, we would! She walked us down a long hallway and into a room, where we saw Mary, the foster mother, and a sixteen-month-old Stephanie Diane, the chubby toddler from our photograph. As soon as we entered the room, we were mesmerized by Stephanie. She looked up at us from the floor where she sat playing with toys, her long eyelashes fluttering. We all sat on the floor with her. I could tell that Bernard liked her immediately. We were all in love. The baby reached for the comb peeking out of my front shirt pocket and pulled it out, fascinated. We spent about an hour with her while her foster mother and the social worker looked on. Vicki, smiling joyfully as she watched Stephanie stare at Bernard and me, said, “I think she prefers males!”

Steft at the time of her adoption in 1975.

“I know this isn’t planned, but do you think you could stay an extra night?” Ruth asked us in her office afterward. Surprised, we asked why.

“I think Mary was so impressed with you that she might be ready to let you take Stephanie home tomorrow.”

I glanced over at Vicki and saw the love and excitement in her face that must have been mirrored on mine. “Yes, yes!” we told Ruth. “We will stay another night.”

Ruth drove us around Boston and to lunch. This gave us a chance to learn, though not as much as we hoped, about Stephanie’s family and medical history. Her biological mother was fifteen and Jewish, her father Catholic and twenty-seven. Her mother was an A student and athletic, and she called every single day to check if Stephanie had been placed with adoptive parents yet. “The calls will stop if you take Stephanie home,” Ruth said with a smile.

That night, we stayed in a motel, but it was hard to sleep because of the excitement. Would we really be driving back home to Rochester with a daughter? We met Ruth in front of Mary’s house in Newton. She was holding Stephanie, who was dressed in a warm jacket, her bag packed. Ruth handed Stephanie into Vicki’s arms. “Enjoy her!” she told us.

Bernard sat up in the front seat with me so that Vicki could hold Stephanie on her lap in the back seat (car seats for children were not required at that time). Stephanie was not receptive to being hugged, maybe because Mary had avoided hugging Stephanie, knowing she would eventually be adopted. But she was comfortable sitting on Vicki’s lap.

We believe our daughter was meant for us, so we kept her first name and replaced her middle name with Vera. In a naming ceremony at Temple Sinai, she was blessed with a Hebrew name, Sarah Hadassah. We didn’t know at the time, but we later learned that Mary’s husband’s name was Bernard, and also that we had started our adoption process on the very same day Stephanie was born—January 5, 1974.

On the trip home, Vicki looked through Stephanie’s bag of clothes and found a note from Mary describing Stephanie’s affinity for certain foods, especially egg salad sandwiches, which she won’t eat today as an adult. The bag included a long strip of lollipops, which Vicki thought were for Bernard. Since he never cared for candy, she put them away.

We learned later that Stephanie was Mary’s one-hundredth foster baby. When Mary noticed Stephanie didn’t babble like the other babies, she kept her longer than she usually kept a baby in her care. When Stephanie was five months old, Mary had her hearing tested and was told she was “hard of hearing.” The baby was fitted with two behind-the-ear hearing aids; then, when Stephanie was fifteen months old, Mary felt that Stephanie was ready for adoption. Later, Mary told us she was very fond of Stephanie. We kept in touch with Mary every year until 2016 when she passed away. We miss her letters.

In Stephanie’s first few days at home with us, she did not seem to possess any language or communication skills. Her room was between ours and Bernard’s, and Vicki and I would take turns sitting with her in the rocking chair next to her crib and reading her bedtime books each night, which she seemed to love. But she did not crawl, stand, or walk, nor was she weaned from a bottle. Stephanie sat cross-legged on the floor and moved around sideways. One of the pictures Mary sent us showed Stephanie sitting in a playpen, which made us realize the reason she hadn’t learned how to crawl or walk before she came home with us was that she likely spent most of her time in a playpen in foster care. We taught her to crawl, and shortly afterward, she started walking and became active. A few weeks later, we went on a camping trip, where she was easily weaned from a bottle when we gave her a cup to drink from instead. She liked that better!

WE QUICKLY MADE arrangements to have Stephanie’s hearing tested at the Rochester School for the Deaf (RSD), where we knew she would get her education. She was indeed profoundly deaf and fitted instead with two body aids. When behind-the-ear hearing aids became more robust, she wore them and still does today. Vicki and Stephanie joined the Demonstration Home Program, later the Parent-Infant Program, on the second floor of Perkins Hall in the administration building at RSD.

We often visited with our friends Harry and Pat Scofield and their two adopted sons, who were our children’s playmates. One day, when Stephanie was two, Pat gave lollipops to the boys but not to Stephanie since she knew Vicki never gave candy to our children. Catching sight of the lollipops, Stephanie’s eyes lit up, and she cried out for one passionately. It was then that Vicki realized the long strip of lollipops Mary had put in the bag had actually been for Stephanie. “OK,” Vicki said, “Just one!” Stephanie was thrilled and immediately stuck the red candy into her mouth. To this day, Stephanie continues to have a very sweet tooth.

Years later, the Hurwitz family visiting with the Scofield family in Ft. Myers, Florida: Shanny, Harry, Sean, Pat, Vicki, Stefi, Bernard, and me.

Because of our strong oral upbringings, we decided that Stephanie would begin with an oral education, but she did not make any progress after a few days of us trying it. We realized that because she’d missed early language stimulation, we’d have to try a different approach. Immediately, we used clear sign concepts with spoken words to facilitate her language acquisition and comprehension. She quickly became responsive to sign language. Her first sign was “book,” as she gently flipped the pages of a book. She was always fascinated with turning pages in books, magazines, and newspapers. Before long, she’d learned her ABCs, fingerspelling, and sign language, always cheerful and happy to learn new things. While she developed the vocabulary to communicate her ideas and needs to us, she used her voice, too. And lipreading came easy to her.

There’s a saying that if children see a lot of books around their house, the chances are very likely they will become voracious readers, but this wasn’t the case with Stephanie. No matter how much we tried to encourage her to read, she was not as interested in reading as Bernard had been at that age. She would read when and what she wanted to. She enjoyed comics and picture stories. That also went for writing—she’d only write when she wanted to, not on command. She wrote well enough to be understood, and that was good enough for her.

After Stephanie completed the Home Demonstration Program, she attended a preschool program at RSD and then School Number One, which is a public school with self-contained classes for deaf and hard of hearing students. She had a wonderful kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Charis Davis, but she had a personality clash with her first-grade teacher, who sent Stephanie to the principal’s office so many times that we lost count. The principal often called us to come and pick up Stephanie. When Vicki learned that Stephanie was left to play in the area outside the principal’s office while she waited for us to arrive, instead of being made to work on schoolwork, Vicki felt this was the wrong tactic to teach behavioral expectations.

Bernard and Stephanie as youngsters.

“Of course, she doesn’t mind being sent to his office,” Vicki said. “It means playtime!”

One day in the fall, Stephanie came home after school crying.

“Oh no, what’s wrong?” Vicki asked her.

Stephanie opened her backpack and pulled out a piece of paper, which she handed to Vicki. On the paper, a worksheet they’d done in her first-grade class that day, Stephanie’s teacher had drawn a red sad-looking face. Stephanie was distraught. Was her teacher sad? Was she mad? Had she done something very wrong?

Full communication was what Stephanie needed, and the teacher had used a drawing without talking with her directly. Vicki called the teacher and objected. Later, when we met with the principal and the teacher, the principal complained to us that Stephanie had a strong personality and was causing trouble in her classes by being inattentive. Vicki and I looked at each other, and Vicki asked, “Because she’s a girl, shouldn’t she be strong and speak up for herself?” The principal looked so embarrassed. He coughed and shuffled some papers on his desk. He said nothing more about Stephanie’s strong personality.

Vicki enjoyed being a homemaker, especially after having been a full-time volunteer for so many years in St. Louis. I knew that she had the potential to succeed in a college environment, and at RIT, she would have full communication access in all her classes, including interpreters that she never had in the past. At the time, we had become close friends with Joan Dickson while she was a part-time student at both RIT and the University of Rochester. She also worked full-time at RIT and had two young daughters. When I learned that Joan was planning to register for a course in adolescent psychology, I asked her to subtly encourage Vicki to take the course with her. But Vicki said, “No way!” when Joan asked her to join her in class. After she told me what Joan said, I asked, “Why not? You have nothing to lose by checking to see whether you like it or not. If not, then you can always withdraw.”

Convinced, Vicki registered for the course as a special student. She was amazed by how much fun she was having in the class and enjoyed studying with Joan. Vicki was also blown away by her first experience of having an interpreter in the classroom. The top-notch sign language interpreter was Alice Beardsley, who happened to be hard of hearing. Vicki finally understood and enjoyed the class lectures, and with the interpreter, Vicki could participate in the class. She also realized how much information she had missed in high school and her previous colleges.

While she enjoyed interacting with the students and talking with the professor, she didn’t want to continue school. She wanted to focus on Bernard’s educational needs and continue as a homemaker. A few years later, while our children were in school, she applied for a major in office management at NTID but withdrew after taking a few courses that she didn’t find challenging enough. Harriette Royer, a friend who happened to be a vocational rehabilitation counselor, offered Vicki a job tutoring an RSD student for a few hours each week.

IN 1978, I was an active NAD member, and Alice Beardsley and I cochaired the NAD conference in Rochester. We were fortunate to have an excellent mentor, Frederick C. Schreiber, then the NAD executive director, who came to Rochester almost every month for eighteen months to assist us with the conference planning. When Alice, unfortunately, had a heart attack that disabled her most of the year before the conference, I took over as the acting chair. Once Alice recovered in time to assume the chair role during the conference, I focused on the details of the conference’s programs and activities. We were thrilled when Fred informed us that Rochester had broken the record for the largest conference attendance, with over 1,200 people. Vicki was the registration chair, and she coordinated a team of wonderful volunteers. She was very organized and prompt with her time lines, and Marv Sachs, the mathematics department chair at NTID, approached me after seeing how well Vicki handled the registration. He asked whether Vicki would be interested in working for him part-time as a records supervisor in the mathematics department. I told him to ask Vicki, and Vicki was so surprised as she shared the good news with me. I encouraged her to accept the job offer.

She enjoyed working part-time in the Math Learning Center and had a wonderful mentor, Dr. Marilu Raman, who at that time was acting chair while Mr. Sachs was on sabbatical. Dr. Raman was an excellent role model and encouraged Vicki to return to school.

Vicki’s work experience influenced her to go back to school when she realized that although she enjoyed working, she didn’t want to continue doing office work. She returned to major in social work on a part-time basis at RIT, while continuing to work part-time. Eventually, she left her job to study full-time and graduated with high honors and a bachelor’s degree in social work at the age of thirty-nine.

As a social work student, Vicki performed her internship with the Rochester Mental Health Chapter under the supervision of Harriette Royer, then the director within The Health Association of Rochester. Harriette and Vicki were instrumental in developing a survey of the needs of deaf and hard of hearing children for a residential treatment facility (RTF), which led to the establishment of an RTF program for deaf and hard of hearing clients at Hillside Children’s Center in 1983. Soon after her internship with Ms. Royer, the program at Hillside Children’s Center was up and running for deaf and hard of hearing clients. Vicki was involved with this without knowing our daughter would later need this kind of support during her years at RSD.

Vicki wanted to be home when our children were home from school, so she worked part-time as a coordinator for the Friendship through Sign Language program for the Monroe County Association for the Hearing Impaired at the Rochester Health Association. She was responsible for matching a hearing person aspiring to develop sign skills with a deaf adult with special needs who felt isolated at home. The goal was twofold: develop the hearing person’s signing fluency while satisfying the deaf adult’s socialization needs.