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Fresh for everyone. This

1:45

is an I Heart Original. I

1:49

used to go to the store

1:52

at noon time and they'd

1:55

be sitting there

1:57

playing checkers. The

2:00

one errors for sound the

2:02

everybody was talking mother sans

2:05

it didn't stab at setters.

2:08

This was a place where you

2:10

could work, gossip with your neighbors,

2:12

salt for supplies, or play a

2:14

cutthroat game of cards, all without

2:16

saying a word. And both

2:18

was seven. And let's go out

2:21

on the staff and every know

2:23

just how much. Just as far

2:25

as what they thought it was

2:28

a sense of wonder why at

2:30

all information before they get a

2:32

show of. This

2:35

place was called it. so mark.

2:37

It's a village on Martha's Vineyard.

2:39

sucked away between rolling hills and

2:42

the slate blue Atlantic Ocean. Till.

2:44

Mark is still around today.

2:47

It's one of the islands

2:49

six and small towns. It's

2:51

always been a small town.

2:53

The differences: Years ago many

2:55

of till months residents were

2:57

death. These were farmers, fishermen,

2:59

husbands, wives, normal everyday folks.

3:02

A word, You're deaf Neighbors are your

3:04

death for hims. They were just your

3:06

friends who happened to be deaf white.

3:08

Your other friends across the way happened

3:10

to be tall were to beep when

3:13

wide. so. A Sign Language

3:15

Development Martha's Vineyard Sign

3:17

Language. Everybody used it.

3:19

Deaf people and hearing

3:21

people. We. Didn't say

3:23

gacy of it. we just

3:25

all publicists accepted. But.

3:28

By the nineteen fifties, this

3:30

way of communicating and chilmark

3:32

was gone few remembered. Sign

3:35

language was once the village

3:37

lingua franca. It seems

3:39

to have disappeared without. A trace.

3:42

Until one day with the assistance

3:44

of a very helpful great grandmother.

3:47

It. Was rediscovered. For

3:49

size do I remember. Members

3:52

know girl. Lie.

3:55

Truth. Show. Dog.

3:58

remember quite a lot Welcome

4:02

to very special episodes in

4:04

I Heart Original Podcast. I'm

4:06

your host Dana Schwartz and

4:08

this is I Remember All

4:10

the Signs. The

4:17

evolution of language is something that

4:19

has been fascinating to me for a long

4:21

time and so this deep dive in this

4:23

episode, it just like it hit all of

4:26

my buttons. I love this type

4:28

of story so much. I love

4:30

stories that involve people connecting with

4:32

their grandparents and then that somehow

4:34

moves our understanding of the world

4:36

around. Go talk to your grandparents.

4:38

You may end up in a future episode. Completely

4:41

call them, talk to them. Oh my God, yes.

4:44

Also what about the secret language aspect? Having

4:47

a secret language with a grandparent? Come on now.

4:49

A secret language with your grandparents? It's

4:51

giving wholesome, it's giving sweet, it's

4:53

giving grandparents day. It's perfect.

4:57

So when I was seven years old

4:59

in second grade, I

5:01

was reading a book inside my desk. This

5:04

is Joan Poole Nash. She grew

5:06

up around Chellmark in the 1960s. It

5:10

was about Helen Keller and when I got to

5:12

the end of the book, they gave the fingerspelling

5:14

alphabet. So I spent

5:16

the afternoon teaching myself to fingerspell. God

5:19

knows what was going on in second grade but nothing

5:21

exciting. Joan didn't know what she

5:23

was doing was a form of sign language.

5:25

She was just passing the time and she

5:27

was excited to show off her new skill.

5:30

After school, I walked by my

5:33

great grandmother's house and I showed

5:35

her the alphabet that I'd taught

5:37

myself. To Joan's surprise, her great

5:39

grandmother, Emily Poole, already seemed to

5:42

know fingerspelling and she knew more

5:44

than that too. She knew signs.

5:47

Signs that weren't in that Helen Keller book.

5:50

And she said, I

5:52

know that one-handed alphabet and I know

5:54

the two-handed alphabet and I

5:56

know all the signs. She immediately

5:58

started teaching me sign language. signs and they

6:01

became a secret language between the

6:03

two of us. Joan was

6:05

just a little girl and she didn't

6:07

realize what her great-grandmother was teaching her.

6:10

She didn't think it was a sign language

6:12

for deaf people. After all,

6:14

she didn't see any deaf people using

6:16

it. Joan figured her

6:18

great-grandmother must have picked it up

6:21

elsewhere. I thought in the back

6:23

of my brother's Boy Scout book, there's a

6:25

book of Indian signs, so that must be

6:27

it. She knows this from when she ran

6:29

the Boy Scout group. But

6:31

it didn't really matter that she didn't know

6:33

what it was called. Joan was hooked on

6:35

sign. And as

6:38

she grew older, she expanded her

6:40

knowledge. She learned American Sign Language,

6:42

or ASL, and even decided to

6:45

study ASL at school. I

6:48

went to Boston University and

6:50

people were just then starting

6:52

to look at sign

6:54

languages as real languages and

6:56

not just made-up gestures. This

7:00

was a pretty new approach. At

7:02

this time, in the 1970s, many

7:04

people didn't take sign languages

7:07

very seriously. They didn't

7:09

consider that they might have

7:11

their own distinct grammars or

7:13

vocabularies, and that sign languages,

7:16

like all living languages,

7:18

grow and evolve. It

7:20

was this last point that the

7:22

academics around Joan were focused on.

7:25

And early on in her studies, while

7:27

in discussion with some older students, she

7:30

had a revelation. The thing that they

7:32

were most interested in at that point

7:34

was how the sign language that people

7:36

use now clearly had been

7:38

different at some time. And

7:41

as I was listening to them, I realized

7:43

the signs that they were using as old

7:45

signs were the signs that my great-grandmother used.

7:48

And so I knew where the signs came from. They came

7:50

from Martha's Vineyard. old

8:00

signs. Joan called up Emily,

8:02

who was by then in her 90s,

8:05

and asked. Her reply?

8:07

Because all these people were deaf. It

8:10

turned out that my great-grandmother knew over

8:12

300 signs. It

8:15

wasn't an answer Joan was expecting to

8:17

hear, but she knew she needed to

8:19

learn more. So Joan

8:21

and other linguists went to Martha's

8:24

Vineyard. They brought along their video

8:26

recording equipment and spent hours and

8:29

hours with the older Chillmark residents,

8:32

asking questions. What

8:34

did they remember about the deaf people who

8:36

had once lived there, and what about this

8:38

sign language they all seem to know? Everybody

8:41

in my grandfather's generation learned to sign, and they

8:43

learned to sign well even if they thought they

8:45

didn't. They would be interviewing them and they'd say,

8:48

oh yeah, I don't remember the sign for horse,

8:50

but, and you'd look at them like, horse, you

8:52

showed it to me, you know? To

8:54

these older generations, sign language was

8:57

second nature, part of the experience

8:59

of living in Chillmark, like fishing

9:01

for striped bass, or raking clams,

9:04

or taking a dip at Moschup

9:06

Beach. None of the people that

9:09

I videotaped had thought that anything

9:11

was unique about hearing people

9:13

using sign language. Joan

9:16

had stumbled upon something, a

9:18

place where hearing people and

9:20

deaf people alike communicated with

9:22

one another as neighbors, as

9:24

equals. But why

9:26

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you've never been to Martha's Vineyard,

11:32

you may have heard about it

11:34

as a tourist spot. Secluded beaches,

11:36

quaint towns, sandy bike trails, fresh

11:39

seafood everywhere. Its year-round

11:41

population is around 23,000. In

11:45

the summer, it grows to 200,000. The

11:49

Obamas, David Letterman, Spike Lee,

11:52

they all vacation there. But

11:54

about 200 years ago, it was pretty quiet, pretty

11:59

rural, and... very remote.

12:01

There weren't many visitors

12:03

at all, let alone

12:05

celebrity visitors. Chillmark,

12:07

located on the southwestern part

12:09

of the island, was especially

12:11

secluded. Chillmark in

12:14

the 19th century was a

12:16

relatively tiny cluster of buildings.

12:19

A couple of churches, a town hall, a

12:21

general store or two, over the span of

12:23

maybe a quarter mile or a half a

12:25

mile of country road. It wasn't the end

12:28

of the world, but you could see it

12:30

from there. This is Bo

12:32

Van Riper. He's the research

12:34

librarian at the Martha's Vineyard

12:36

Museum. He and other historians

12:38

have been working with Joan to learn

12:40

more about the island, and

12:43

specifically Chillmark's, history of

12:45

sign language. One

12:49

of the great ironies of studying

12:51

the Chillmark Deaf community is the

12:53

thing that makes it remarkable that

12:55

people saw deafness just

12:58

as another way of being human, means

13:01

that the official records

13:04

rarely consistently point out people's

13:06

deafness as a way of

13:08

describing them. It might have

13:10

been that George or Bob

13:12

was deaf, but that everybody

13:14

was so used to that that

13:16

it wouldn't have occurred to them to mention

13:19

the fact. Deafness

13:21

can happen for a variety

13:23

of reasons, like from complications

13:25

during pregnancy or a childhood

13:27

infection. But on Martha's

13:29

Vineyard, it was because of genetics. Some

13:32

of the early white settlers, especially

13:35

the ones who ended up near Chillmark, carried

13:37

the gene for hereditary deafness.

13:40

At first, it was just a couple of people. It's

13:44

worth noting that for most of the 18th

13:46

century, the number

13:49

of deaf people on the vineyard was

13:51

extremely small, that you could probably

13:53

have counted them at any point on

13:55

the fingers of one hand with your

13:58

thumb left over. But

14:00

over time, the deaf population

14:02

grew. Bo estimates that

14:05

at its peak in the mid-19th

14:07

century, the deaf population on the

14:09

island was no more than 50

14:11

people. But

14:13

when towns are so small, that's still

14:15

a sizable percentage. The

14:18

figure that you often see quoted as one

14:20

in every five show workers was deaf at

14:22

a time when the incidence

14:25

on the mainland was something

14:27

like one in

14:29

several thousands. And

14:31

on the mainland, the deaf population was

14:34

often treated much, much differently.

14:37

During this time, deafness was

14:39

commonly seen as a, quote,

14:41

defect and often linked with

14:44

insanity. At best, deaf

14:46

people were viewed as other. At

14:50

worst, they were ostracized. Often

14:53

people who studied deafness and taught

14:55

deaf students, people like the inventor

14:57

of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell,

15:00

thought the ultimate goal for

15:02

all deaf people should be

15:04

complete assimilation into hearing society.

15:07

God forbid anyone know you're deaf. Bell

15:11

believed in a method called

15:13

oralism, which values spoken language

15:15

over other forms, meaning

15:18

the deaf should learn how to

15:20

read lips and speak aloud. Some

15:23

even thought sign language should be

15:25

banned altogether. But in

15:28

a way, Tillmark's isolation saved

15:30

it from this narrow-minded thinking.

15:33

Oralism didn't cross anyone's mind because

15:36

it didn't make any sense. So

15:38

many community members were deaf,

15:41

brothers, husbands, daughters, neighbors, that

15:43

using sign language was the

15:45

simplest way for everyone to

15:47

live and work together. hearing

16:01

engaged in conversation with their

16:03

neighbors and they'd be simultaneously

16:06

speaking aloud to their hearing

16:08

neighbors and signing the conversation

16:11

for their deaf neighbors. At

16:14

church, a hearing person would automatically

16:16

sign the sermon. At a

16:18

town meeting, someone would sign the agenda, so

16:21

both deaf and hearing residents

16:23

knew when to signal their

16:25

votes. Neither hearing nor deaf

16:27

people would be shut out

16:29

of any given conversation. All

16:31

could participate. As

16:34

far as we know, in Schillmark

16:36

in the 19th century into

16:38

the 20th century, the deaf

16:41

were, from an

16:43

economic, political, social point of

16:45

view, fully integrated members of

16:47

the community. They voted in

16:49

town meetings, they held positions

16:51

of respect and authority. There

16:54

was no social distinction

16:56

between deaf and hearing. Having a

16:58

deaf person look after your children

17:01

or marry your son or your

17:03

daughter or be your business partner,

17:05

your neighbor, your few mate in

17:07

church was a

17:09

completely unremarkable thing. We don't

17:13

know exactly when Martha's

17:15

Vineyard sign language first

17:17

started, but we do

17:19

know who started it. The deaf

17:22

residents in and near Schillmark. And

17:24

because of that, it was specific

17:26

to life on a small island.

17:28

For example, its focus on fish.

17:32

Being able to distinguish between multiple

17:34

species of fish and

17:36

being able to have different signs for

17:39

the fish that's sitting on your dinner plate as

17:41

opposed to the fish that you're trying to catch

17:44

is only useful if you make

17:46

your living fishing and if most

17:48

of the people you live and

17:50

work with also make their living

17:53

fishing. exist

18:00

in modern-day standard ASL, or

18:02

at least look very different.

18:05

Anybody who's ever seen a scallop

18:08

swimming underwater will instantly recognize why

18:10

that's the sign for scallop, because

18:12

that's what a scallop looks like.

18:15

Anybody who's seen a swordfish swimming with

18:17

its sharp dorsal fin and

18:19

sharp tail fin poking out of

18:21

the water, as most co-workers would

18:23

have, would instantly recognize, oh yes,

18:25

of course, that swordfish. There

18:28

were other unique signs, too. As

18:31

Joan continued her research, she was

18:33

especially delighted to find one in

18:35

particular. So the

18:37

sign for Cranberry is just very important

18:40

to me because no one uses it

18:42

anywhere else except here. On the mainland,

18:44

there is no sign for Cranberry, and

18:47

so I make it important. Everyone

18:49

who I teach sign language to, I always show them

18:51

the sign for Cranberry. Here,

18:53

Joan makes the sign, curling the fingers

18:56

of her left hand into a loose

18:58

fist, her thumb on top. With

19:01

her other thumb and index finger, she flicks

19:03

at the left thumb like you might a

19:05

marble. It's just your

19:07

thumb flicking the cranberry off the

19:09

little bush in the water and

19:12

gathering them up. Tailoring

19:14

the language to the community meant that

19:16

the people who use it, the people

19:19

of Chillmark, had signs for themselves, too.

19:22

They had a sign for most everybody, for

19:24

the person. That's Eric Kottle.

19:26

He grew up around Chillmark when

19:28

the deaf community was still a

19:31

notable presence. Before he passed away

19:33

in 2010 at the age of 92, Eric was interviewed by the

19:38

Martha's Vineyard Museum as part

19:40

of its oral history project.

19:43

Now, if it was a Filipino, he lost his

19:45

hand in a threshing machine when he was young,

19:47

so you'd know that was Benny Nail. But

19:50

as he talks, Eric makes a sign,

19:52

chopping off his right hand with his

19:54

left. And earn his mail. Yes,

19:57

we'll see it. Now he's hitting his

19:59

forehead with a flat hand, almost

20:01

saluting. They used to

20:03

hang maid baskets. Can

20:05

he run into somebody's clothesline, but it broke his neck.

20:07

They hit him right across the stairs, so that was

20:10

a sign for Ernest O'Male. Sign

20:13

language was so ingrained in life

20:15

in Chillmark that it wasn't limited

20:17

to use only when a deaf person

20:19

was present. As Bo

20:22

points out, hearing people in

20:24

Chillmark understood that in many

20:26

circumstances, signing was the preferred

20:28

method of communication. There

20:30

are stories about farmers who, when they

20:32

were out in the field and their

20:34

wife, say, wanted to pass them some

20:37

message to bring us and such when

20:39

you come in for supper, they bang

20:41

on a pot or a bell to

20:43

get the farmer's attention, and then rather

20:45

than hollering across the open field, they'd

20:47

sign their request and he'd sign back.

20:50

And this was even more effective for the

20:52

town's fishermen out on the water. Once

20:55

people started using internal combustion and

20:58

engines rather than sails, one of

21:00

the problems they ran up against

21:02

was that the engines were incredibly

21:04

deafeningly loud. And so if your

21:06

engine was running, it was far

21:08

easier to just sign, hey, how's

21:11

the fishing today or are there

21:13

any cod over there by the

21:15

buoy or whatever, than to try

21:17

and get close enough to holler over

21:20

the sound of the engine or turn off

21:22

the engine and then have to get

21:24

it started again. Jones'

21:27

father, Everett Poole, was also interviewed

21:29

by the Martha's Vineyard Museum before

21:31

he passed away, and

21:33

he too remembered his own

21:35

father, a hearing man, signing with

21:38

other men out on the boats.

21:41

I'd be fishing with my father, we'd pull up

21:43

alongside of another boat. In those

21:45

days we had these damned old noisy, laser

21:47

pendulum shoes, you couldn't hear yourself think, you

21:49

know, and they'd pull up alongside it. My

21:52

father just talked to the guy with his

21:54

singers, you know, he didn't bother to shout

21:56

at all. There

21:59

were other unexplainable things. expected benefits to knowing

22:01

how to sign, like

22:03

during cutthroat card games with

22:05

neighboring towns, towns that

22:08

didn't know sign language. I

22:10

remember all the signs. That was diamonds.

22:14

I was clubs. I was

22:16

hearts. I was spades. That's

22:18

Eric Coddle again. So we cheat.

22:21

We give each other signs. Here

22:24

Eric taps his chest. We

22:26

know I hit hard actually. We were

22:28

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near you. Martha's

24:28

Vineyard Sign Language was a

24:30

robust and complex language. For

24:33

years it was a specific

24:35

and completely normal part of

24:37

life for its users. But

24:40

the idea of a special sign language

24:42

that arises to fit the needs of

24:44

a community is not, in fact, unique

24:46

to Chillmark. Villages

24:49

in Ghana, Mexico, India, Turkey,

24:51

Japan, and Indonesia also have

24:53

their own sign languages, used

24:56

by deaf and hearing residents alike.

24:59

Like Chillmark, these communities are

25:01

often quite small. And

25:04

like Chillmark was once, they

25:06

are often quite isolated. In

25:08

fact, it was that change,

25:10

becoming less isolated, that ushered

25:12

in the demise of Martha's

25:15

Vineyard Sign Language. By,

25:18

say, 1850, several

25:20

things are coming together that

25:23

changed the way deafness

25:25

happened on the island and that

25:27

changed the experience of the Chillmark

25:29

deaf. That's both Ann

25:31

Riper again. One

25:34

was that as transportation technology

25:36

improved, as steamboats replaced sail

25:38

ferries, and steamboats became themselves

25:41

more reliable, it became easier

25:43

for people to go back

25:45

and forth to the mainland,

25:47

which made it more likely

25:50

that Chillmarkers would meet and

25:52

become friendly with and potentially

25:54

marry and have children with

25:57

people from off the island. non-island

26:00

people had a different gene

26:02

pool, meaning the chances that

26:04

your children would be born deaf got

26:06

more and more rare. The

26:09

other major factor was a big

26:11

change in access to deaf education.

26:14

In 1817, Thomas Gallaudet and

26:16

Laurent Clerc started what's now

26:18

known as the American School

26:20

for the Deaf. The

26:22

school, which is located in Hartford,

26:24

Connecticut, was the first of its

26:26

kind in the US. It

26:29

offered deaf children around the country

26:31

a chance to live and study

26:33

together. Most of the deaf

26:35

children on Martha's Vineyard ended up attending.

26:38

There they learned what would become the

26:40

standard sign language in the US. It

26:43

introduced them to American Sign Language,

26:45

which was being developed in those

26:47

years. It also meant that they

26:50

came home speaking not

26:52

only the sign language that they were

26:54

used to in homework, but also this

26:56

new sign language that linked

26:59

them to a larger, regionwide,

27:01

eventually nationwide community of the

27:03

deaf. So the

27:05

incidence of hereditary deafness was

27:08

worsening. ASL was coming into

27:10

its own. And let's

27:12

not forget that oralism, where

27:15

the objective was assimilation into

27:17

hearing society, was still around

27:19

too. All of

27:21

which, sadly, meant the eventual downfall

27:23

of Martha's Vineyard's sign language. By

27:27

the middle of the 20th century,

27:29

it was effectively extinct as an

27:31

active language, even though it was

27:33

still being used as late as

27:35

the 1930s. Its

27:39

last native user, a deaf woman

27:41

named Katie, died in the 1950s.

27:45

And so knowing sign language, something

27:47

that used to be so commonplace

27:50

in Chillmark, no longer seemed as

27:52

necessary. Growing up in the 1930s,

27:55

Joan's father, Everett, remembered

27:58

thinking exactly that. I

28:00

have no patience with it, you know. Another

28:02

generation, it didn't make sense to me why

28:04

do that, you know. But as

28:07

a historian, Bowe takes a different

28:09

view. Shulmark and

28:11

the Vineyard's reputation as

28:13

a deaf utopia remains

28:15

a powerful idea because

28:18

it holds out at least the

28:20

potential promise that things as they

28:22

are are not things as they

28:24

have to be. I

28:26

can't speak to what it would feel

28:28

like to be a deaf person learning

28:31

about this, but from the outside looking

28:33

in, I can imagine if you'd spent

28:35

your whole life feeling as

28:37

if hearing society wanted to hold you

28:39

at arm's length and didn't know what

28:42

to do with you. The idea of

28:44

a place where the deaf

28:47

were embraced and welcomed as

28:49

humans, as individuals, must be

28:52

an extraordinarily powerful story. Today,

28:57

it's estimated there are around 1

28:59

million deaf people in the United

29:01

States, and that almost 4% of

29:04

Americans have difficulty hearing. More

29:07

than 500,000 people use ASL

29:09

to communicate as their native

29:11

language, and almost three quarters

29:13

of parents with deaf children

29:16

don't know sign language. That's

29:18

much, much different than what

29:20

deaf kids in Shulmark experience.

29:23

They grow up in homes

29:25

where there's a lack of

29:27

knowledge of sign, meaning that there's a barrier

29:29

on their ability to connect with their parents.

29:32

Niall DeMarco is a model,

29:35

actor, producer, and deaf activist.

29:37

We're talking with him through his

29:40

ASL translator, so that's the translator's

29:42

voice you're hearing. Oftentimes

29:44

hearing parents want their babies to

29:46

be like them, which is so

29:48

natural, but oftentimes that leads to

29:51

the mistake of, say, teaching oralism

29:54

and wanting them to speak the same

29:56

way when there might be another option

29:58

available. option,

30:00

of course, is sign language, which

30:02

was how Niall grew up. Really,

30:05

long before my very first memories, I was

30:07

learning sign language. I had exposure to the

30:09

language from the first day that I opened

30:11

my eyes, and at home I had constant

30:13

exposure to ASL. Truly, you know,

30:15

sign language is my first language, even though also

30:17

English very much feels like my first language in

30:20

a lot of ways, they sort of run in

30:22

parallel. Niall is in

30:24

fact fourth generation Deaf, and

30:27

so he was raised in a

30:29

world where Deafness is celebrated, not

30:31

misunderstood or feared. In

30:33

2022, he wrote a memoir called Deaf Utopia. He

30:38

meant the title to be provocative. I

30:40

knew that so many hearing people would see that and

30:43

say, that can't be a perfect world, but what if

30:45

it is? It was something that I wanted to achieve

30:47

with my book. I wanted people to really read through

30:49

it and understand the perspective that a Deaf person has

30:51

when we don't have the communication barriers. You know, now

30:53

I'm able to function as a bilingual

30:56

adult between two languages quite easily, and I

30:58

think people should know that. In

31:00

Deaf Utopia, he tells the story

31:03

about the moment his dad found

31:05

out one day old Niall and

31:07

his twin brother were both Deaf.

31:10

He raised his fist in excitement.

31:12

He kissed his wife. He

31:14

was proud. So, although Niall

31:17

was born in 1989, in

31:19

some ways his life was similar to Deaf

31:22

kids growing up in Chillmark in the 18th

31:24

and 19th centuries. You

31:28

know, my entire household, everyone was accessible

31:30

to me. We could share ideas and

31:32

we could talk about not only current

31:34

events, but hot topics.

31:37

And that's a very different story than many other Deaf

31:40

kids out there who are born to hearing families.

31:42

I'm a part of a 10% quite

31:44

rare subset where my parents are Deaf and

31:47

also they use sign language. Niall

31:49

used ASL at home and he

31:51

went to a Deaf school and

31:54

a Deaf university where ASL was

31:56

also predominant. So, it pretty

31:58

much wasn't until he began his career. his professional

32:00

life that he was faced with

32:02

a world that didn't know how to sign,

32:05

and that didn't know

32:07

much about Deaf people or Deaf

32:09

culture either. It

32:11

wasn't really until I got into the

32:13

entertainment industry when I started to realize,

32:16

oh, okay, I'm

32:18

being reminded that I'm Deaf every day. I have

32:20

to explain that I'm Deaf. Whether

32:22

that was hearing writers, directors, or

32:25

producers, I'm in a smaller minority

32:27

that is expected to very much

32:29

assimilate with society's design that was

32:31

really built for hearing people. It

32:33

makes him wonder, what if

32:35

some of that chillmark culture had seeped

32:38

into the rest of the country? I

32:40

wish that everyone knew some basic sign language.

32:43

Oftentimes I wonder, what if every hearing

32:45

school out there required some

32:47

basic ASL in elementary school? I

32:49

think it would make such a

32:51

massive difference in the lives of

32:53

Deaf people, but more so in

32:55

how hearing people perceive us

32:58

in our community and how they interact with us every

33:00

day. And that's huge. I mean,

33:02

it really just, it helps humanize us

33:04

in many ways. That's

33:06

why the story of Martha's Vineyard

33:08

sign language resonates so much with

33:10

him. I remember when I

33:13

learned about it, I really had wished

33:15

that that tiny island was sort of

33:17

like the whole United States, because I

33:19

thought it must have been amazing to

33:21

have hearing people choose to

33:23

learn sign language instead of speaking with

33:25

other hearing people. It's a great example

33:27

of how you can build a culture

33:30

within a community that's really for everybody.

33:34

It's a sentiment people on Martha's

33:36

Vineyard share as well. People

33:38

like Bo and Joan and Jane

33:40

Slater. Jane is 92

33:43

years old now, but as a

33:45

child in Chillmark, she regularly interacted

33:47

with some of the last members

33:49

of the town's Deaf community, like

33:52

the ladies who would stop by

33:54

her grandmother's house to chat. I

33:57

just remember the women sitting

33:59

around. and being able to understand

34:01

a little of it. My grandmother

34:03

taught me how to say, hello,

34:06

come in, sit down, she'll be right with

34:08

you, that kind of stuff. And

34:11

then they would always try to get

34:13

me to do, talk to them,

34:15

so that was fun. They'd get you into

34:17

the conversation. I did not

34:19

know that that was unusual. I mean, I don't

34:21

know when I became aware that

34:24

people were interested in that, but

34:26

I do feel lucky that I was

34:28

born early enough to still be part

34:30

of the Chilmarch that

34:33

included some of

34:35

the Chilmarch Deaf. They really

34:38

were a part of the community, and there was no awareness of

34:40

them being different, and

34:44

I think that really made Chilmarch a special

34:46

place. I

34:53

have to confess, as a child, I was one of

34:55

those, like, Midwestern child who just

34:57

thought that Martha's Vineyard was an actual vineyard,

34:59

and I think in my mind, owned

35:02

by Martha Stewart. Same, yep. So

35:05

this has been illuminating for me

35:07

in many, many ways. I've

35:10

learned so much this episode. I've just learned so

35:12

much this episode specifically. I

35:14

also loved how a person's worst accident becomes their sign

35:16

language name. Like, that to me was wild. Like,

35:19

dude gets his hand lopped off by a thresher all of a sudden. Everyone

35:21

mimes losing a hand, like, yeah, that's Benny Mayhew. Like,

35:23

can you imagine that? We will

35:26

remember you by your trauma. I like the

35:28

mention of Gallaudet School for the Deaf. I have

35:30

a quick Gallaudet School for the Deaf story. I

35:32

almost told this when we were at the Super

35:34

Bowl, because it's a football story.

35:37

Oh, laid on us. So I

35:39

played on the club football team in

35:41

college at Duke, and that's, don't picture

35:43

college football. Picture, like, idiots on a

35:46

playground. I do like a

35:48

picture that you played for Duke. There

35:50

were only, like, three other teams in

35:52

the region that we would play, and

35:54

every year we would go up to

35:56

Washington, D.C., where Gallaudet had a team,

35:58

and they were like a... legit football

36:00

team. And again, we were not. And

36:02

so we got crushed. I

36:04

think it was 44 to 12

36:07

and 46 to 14. But the thing

36:09

that happened both years, which

36:11

amazes me, every time when

36:14

they wanted to hike the ball, they would

36:16

beat a big drum and they would feel

36:18

the vibration and they would know that's how

36:20

to go. And by the end

36:22

of the game, we had all become accustomed

36:24

to this. And one time they went on

36:27

the second drum beat both years

36:29

and we all dove off sides on

36:31

the first one. That's

36:33

amazing. I absolutely love

36:36

that story. You guys' ass is

36:38

handed to you by that, by

36:40

a drum beat. Also,

36:42

like I was thinking about when I was in

36:44

high school, one of my best friends, he taught

36:46

me sign language, but just the alphabet, right? And

36:48

then there was a bunch of cute girls in

36:50

his history class and they also spoke sign language.

36:52

So he was able to win over all this

36:54

favor with them by helping them. He was really

36:56

smart. So he would cheat in history class and

36:58

they would be sitting there doing sign language and

37:01

the teacher had no idea. So when I saw

37:03

them doing the secret languages, I was like, Oh,

37:05

I've seen that totally work. So yeah.

37:07

Oh, by the way, if you'd like, I cast

37:10

this one as well. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Please.

37:12

So if you guys were curious, I did, it

37:14

took me a second because I was like, Oh,

37:16

how would I cast this? Who feels right for

37:18

Martha's Vineyard other than Martha Stewart? So I went

37:20

with, for Joan Pool Nash,

37:22

I thought Mary Steenburgen just seemed right, right?

37:24

I don't know why it just seemed

37:26

right. And then for Boent, the historian, I

37:28

thought Michael Sheen, right? I don't know why,

37:31

but Michael Sheen just felt right for

37:33

him. Right. And then for Niall DeMarco's keeping

37:35

that vibe, I thought Barry Keegan, right?

37:37

You get this cool deaf activist. He seems like I

37:40

had that integrity. And then finally for the 92 year

37:42

old local, Jane Slater, I thought,

37:44

let's give it up to a legend, Carol Burnett.

37:46

Anytime Carol Burnett's coming on screen, I'm happy. Right.

37:48

And you know, she used to do sign language

37:51

every episode of her show, but it was a

37:53

specific little sign she gave to her, I think

37:55

it was her mother and she would always

37:57

signal with her hand to her mother at the end of every

37:59

episode. It was like own little sign language. So

38:01

I thought, boom, we got to honor that. This

38:03

is perfect. Zaren, you did it again. Thank

38:05

you, Dana. Very

38:09

special episodes is made by some

38:11

very special people. This show is

38:13

hosted by Danish Wort, Zaren Burnett,

38:15

and me, Jason English. Our

38:18

producer is Josh Fisher. Today's

38:20

episode was written by Joanna

38:22

Sokolowski and Julia Smith. Additional

38:25

writing by Maritha Brown. Writing

38:28

and sound design by Josh Thain. Mixing

38:31

and mastering by Bahid Frazier. Our

38:34

story editors are Abby Stone

38:36

and Maritha Brown. Oral history

38:38

clips with Eric Cottle, Everett

38:41

Poole, Sydney Harris, and

38:43

Gene Slater are excerpted

38:46

from interviews conducted with Lindsay

38:48

Lee, Martha's Vineyard

38:50

Museum oral history curator, courtesy

38:52

of the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

38:55

Couldn't have done it without you. Original

38:58

music by Elise McCoy. Research

39:00

and fact checking by Meredith Stanko, Austin

39:03

Thompson, Joanna Sokolowski, and

39:05

Julia Smith. Show

39:08

logo by Lucy Quintanilla. I'm

39:10

your executive producer. Very special

39:13

episodes is a production of I Heart

39:15

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