![]() ![]() Life as the deaf man’s son carried daily indignities for both generations. Instead of being identified as “the deaf man’s son,” he was known as a football player. In high school, football became his passport to normalcy. ![]() ![]() His grandmother defined the child’s role reversal bluntly, saying, “You must always take care of your parents.” Only by escaping to the roof of their apartment building, away from family duties and taunting playmates, could he dream of being a “normal kid.” ![]() From the age of 6, he functioned as a miniature adult, becoming his parents’ designated ears and voice as he communicated with neighbors, merchants, doctors, and waiters.Īt the poultry shop near their Brooklyn apartment, for example, his father, Louis, would sign to the little boy, “Tell Mr. Before he could speak or write, he learned American Sign Language, gesturing with his young hands to communicate with his mother and father, who were deaf.Īs Uhlberg explains in his deeply moving memoir, Hands of My Father, he straddled two worlds as he grew up in the 1940s and 1950s – one profoundly silent, belonging to his parents, the other rich with sound. But Myron Uhlberg’s first language took a different form. Say “language” and most people think of the rich intricacies of written and spoken words. ![]()
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