A Deaf Immigrant From Russia

Henry Gilman in 1975.

My Uncle Henry

A Deaf Immigrant From Russia

By Dale Brown

 

When I was young, I was afraid of my deaf great-uncle. He grunted strangely and gestured wildly. Once he bared his teeth and motioned across them with his finger. I knew he was telling me to brush my teeth, but he reminded me of an animal growling. My fear lingered for weeks. I saw Uncle Henry only at infrequent family gatherings.

 

We had some superficial conversations and wrote notes to each other. However, since his notes were ungrammatical and I could not understand his speech, the communication barrier was great. I learned little about his past or his day-to-day life, such as what he did when he was at work.

 

I couldn’t begin to love him until after I became a professional in the field of disability. Then I learned about deafness. Soon after that Uncle Henry died, but I have learned about his life from other relatives, from the school for the deaf he attended and from people familiar with Jewish Russian families that immigrated to this country at the beginning of this century.

 

Neither famous nor exceptional, Henry Gilman is nevertheless an interesting individual. Since almost the turn of the last century, he led an active life in this country and had a severe disability.

 

Uncle Henry came to the United States in 1910 when he was five and a half years old. With his mother and four brothers and sisters, he came by boat from Odessa, a seaport in southern Russia, traveling with many other immigrants in the steerage compartment of a large ship. Tiny cubicles along the wall served for bunk beds. The food was terrible, sanitation was poor, and many people were seasick. According to one of Henry’s sisters, The cattle they were shipping were treated better than we were.

 

The Gilman’s were destined for New York City. Almost five years earlier, Henry’s father had gone to America. By 1910 he had saved enough money to bring his family over.

 

At the time of his immigration, Henry had been disabled for three years. In Odessa an epidemic of spinal meningitis had killed his eldest sister, left another sister, Elizabeth, with a severe limp, and made him totally deaf. The family was unable to communicate with him, except for his older brother Manny, with whom Henry developed a private language of gestures.

While the United States welcomed immigrants to help work the country’s farmlands and factories, disabled persons were expressly forbidden. In Odessa no one had bothered to stop the Gilman family with its two disabled children. But getting past the American immigration authorities in New York City was a different story.

 

Henry’s mother decided that his sister Elizabeth would hide her limp by carrying a large bundle of clothing. The family would crowd around her to further screen her from the observation of immigration officers. Because Henry’s disability had no physical manifestations, he would be in danger only if spoken to. So his brother Manny was instructed to stay next to Henry when the family landed and answer questions for him.

 

At Ellis Island in New York Harbor, the immigrants from Henry’s ship were numbered and divided into groups. They were herded onto a wharf and led into a large hall where they were examined for contagious diseases and asked many questions.

 

Eventually, an immigration officer spoke to Henry, asking him Whats your name? in Russian.

 

His names Henry, said Manny.

 

Whats wrong with him? Can’t he talk?

 

Sure he can talk, he’s just scared, replied Manny, now frightened for his brother.

 

Turning back to Henry, the official said, Don’t be afraid. Relax and tell me your name. When he hoped the immigration officer wasn’t looking, Manny motioned name to Henry. Henry grunted.

 

With a piece of chalk, the officer put an X on the back of Henry’s shirt and told the family. You’ll have to be detained in the medical section. We can’t let mentally defective children into this country. To a prison-like setting Henry, his brother, sisters and mother found themselves relegated without hope. The first time Henry saw his father, a wire fence separated them. Although he was not six years old, Henry realized that he was the cause of all the trouble. Because of him, the family might be forced to go back to Russia!

 

Henry’s father tried appealing to officials to allow his son and family to come into the country. With a small amount of money saved up to help the family begin a new life, he even offered one officer a bribe. It was unsuccessful.

 

But Henry did something to resolve the problem. One afternoon, after a week in medical detention, he was sketching with paper and several crayons, one of his favorite pastimes. An officer passed and commented kindly on Henry’s work. Henry didn’t understand what the officer had said, but flashed a friendly smile. The next day, he made a sketch of the officer and gave him the picture.

 

The man was pleased. Feeling a sympathy for the young, obviously talented boy, he successfully pressed his superiors to allow the family to enter this country. One of the few deaf immigrants, if not the only one, allowed into this country at the beginning of the century was my Great-uncle Henry.

 

The family settled into a small one-bedroom apartment, living the crowded, poverty-stricken life typical of immigrants in the early 1900s. The father continued working in a laundry and the children enrolled in public schools.

 

But Henry did not attend school until a year had passed and his parents heard about the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City. Henry would even board there, which would relieve the overcrowding at the family house and mean one less mouth to feed. However, the school would only accept new students at age six, and Henry was already seven. So Henry’s mother claimed he was a year younger. He attended Lexington School until he graduated in 1926.

 

At Lexington, besides academic subjects typical to American schools of the day, Henry learned to speak. Teachers worked with the young children on a one-to-one basis, encouraging them to make sounds and giving them feedback on what sounds were produced. Students learned that some sounds, when properly voiced, would cause the speakers throat and chest to vibrate palpably. Other sounds, such as p, produced a puff of air that could be felt on a hand in front of the speakers mouth.

 

Lip reading was emphasized strenuously. Teachers talked to the children in class and expected spoken replies. They would converse about the day of the week, the date, and what they expected to do that day. During meals, students were expected to speak to each other and their teacher, who ate with them.

 

Sign language was forbidden. Children who used it were corrected and even beaten. At the time, and even currently, but to a much lesser extent, sign language was considered an inferior form of communication. Deaf people could not possibly be rehabilitated, it was thought, unless they tried to duplicate normal verbal communication. Still, the students at Lexington, like many students at other institutions serving deaf people, taught signing to each other. By graduation, my uncle was a fluent signer. He also spoke and read lips, but he was never able to hold a smooth conversation with a hearing person.

 

With his brother Manny, Henry continued to communicate in a private language. With hearing friends, Henry relied on his lip reading skills and expressed himself with a combination of words and gestures. According to one friend, Henry could talk with his eyes. If he was excited, his eyes would light up and start moving around, if he wanted us to look at something, we could follow the direction that his eyes looked.

 

But within the family, Uncle Henry did feel much loneliness. Because of the communication barrier, he spent long hours sitting by himself. When the family gathered together, he was left out, unless he was talking to Manny. Although he could conduct a conversation with one person, he could not follow a group discussion.

 

The Gilman’s was a close family. There was much warmth and much fighting. Perhaps Henry was lucky not to hear, for he never took sides in the many arguments. Instead, everyone turned to him for comfort - he was always there for them.

 

He enjoyed playing ball with the youngsters, and was kind to the children, especially when they became upset. Several times, when they would run off, Uncle Henry would follow and encourage them to return.

 

Fortunately, Uncle Henry had many deaf friends. He kept in touch with his fellow graduates at Lexington School. They would meet at certain benches at Graves End Park in New York City and take long walks in the city. He also joined a beach club for deaf people.

 

His two lives were very separate. The family rarely saw his deaf friends and they didn’t see his family. I still wonder what his personality was like when he was among deaf people.

 

The family was constantly after Henry to get married. But Henry consistently refused to propose, although he loved to date. Because he thought that deafness was hereditary, he didn’t want to marry a deaf woman and bring a deaf child into the world. Marrying a hearing woman would be a problem because Henry feared that a hearing child would be ashamed of him and unwilling to communicate. Besides he had trouble even talking to women who were not deaf.

 

As was customary, the family hired a matchmaker who brought several girls, all of whom Uncle Henry refused. Then finally, the matchmaker found a rich, beautiful deaf woman. Again Uncle Henry refused, putting his hand to his chest and saying Heart not in it.

 

Thats it! No more! exclaimed the matchmaker. She was my best. If he doesn’t like her, he won’t like anyone else. Indeed, he never found anyone he wanted to marry.

 

Employment was another aspect of adult life complicated by Uncle Henry’s deafness. Although at school Henry, like many deaf teenagers of that time, acquired the skills to be a printer, nobody wanted to hire a deaf man. Work was especially hard to find in the 1930s (during the Depression), when millions of people were unemployed. But when World War II began, jobs opened up as able-bodied men went off to fight. Henry found work silk screening advertisement posters.

 

For several years, Henry’s employment worked out fine. However, when the war ended, the company tried to fire Henry and hire a returning serviceman in Henry’s place. Fortunately, Henry’s union defended him and he kept his job, continuing at it for 23 years.

 

By the time Uncle Henry retired with full benefits in 1967, he had his own apartment and lived independently. He had many deaf friends and was active in a deaf social club, where he enjoyed parties, billiards and outings. He maintained contact with his family, primarily with Manny and his wife. But at large gatherings, Uncle Henry continued having difficulty communicating with other family members.

 

Still, the youngest members of the family, the grandchildren of Uncle Henry’s brothers and sisters, wanted to reach out to him. But they found him difficult to understand and fearsome in behavior. An exception was his great-nephew Andrew Ramer, who enjoyed a special relationship with Uncle Henry.

 

We would sit and hold hands, Andrew explained, I enjoyed the nonverbal connection. We’d sit side-to-side, knee-to-knee, and we’d stare at each other intently.

 

One day in 1973, I greeted Uncle Henry with a little sign language that I had just learned. I love you, Uncle Henry. I said. He was so excited at this, he jumped up and down with joy and hugged me. He signed back. I love you, Dale.

 

I haven’t learned that much, I told him, this time using pencil and notepaper. But I’d like to. Someday I hope we can really talk about things.

 

I bought a book of signs and he began to teach me. This gave us something we could do together and we drew closer. But learning sign language required a commitment of time and energy that must go beyond a few family gatherings. Uncle Henry died in 1975, before I or anyone else had made that commitment.

 

When I look back at his life, I see a man trapped not by deafness, but by the attitudes of his time. For example, nobody believed that a deaf person could advance far in employment. But clearly, my great-uncle had the intuition and the intelligence to work well and should have become a supervisor or secured a better job than he did.

 

And his family? Why didn’t they learn sign language? This family valued learning - they knew Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew and English. Even when there wasn’t enough to eat, the family found money for books and lessons. They would have learned if the opportunity had been there.

 

Much of what Uncle Henry experienced in his life has been experienced by deaf persons in other families, at other schools, and at other job sites. I like to think that progress has been made since Uncle Henry’s era. With better understanding of the lifestyles of deaf persons, and with greater acceptance of sign language, deaf and hearing persons can peek through the wall that separates them. I hope no deaf person sits alone at family gatherings any more. They have much to contribute, as my Uncle Henry did to his family and to his adopted country.

 

Authors: Dale and Susan Brown

 

Pictures contributed by Joy Ranz Gilman.

 

Background research for this story was done at the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf in Washington, D.C. Suzanne Neel, the librarian, was very helpful.

 

Material was drawn from World Of Our Fathers, by Irving Howe, published by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976, pages 42-46; Printing: An Ideal Vocation for Deaf, by Robert F. Salade, The Volta Review, 1916, Volume 18, pages 59-63; and Individuality of School for the Deaf, by Sarah Harvey Porter.

 

Published in U S Legacies Magazine May 2005