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Jefferson Award Winner Bridges Communication Gap
February 7, 2008
HOUSTON — Our Jefferson Award winner this month has spent most of
her 99 years in service of people who were once a target of social
discrimination, KPRC Local 2 reported Thursday.
Lillian Fitzgerald Beard is a champion of those born without the
ability to communicate, except in their own unique way. And she’s had
a hand in helping them overcome their disability.
Her hands have spoken volumes.
Although Miss Lillian is not deaf, her adoptive parents were. So,
they taught her to communicate with her hands. It’s called signing.
And it was Miss Lillian’s first language.
“I’m just now realizing that it was God who sent me into a family
home that needed to teach me the language In order that I might be
able to minister to the people,” she said.
When Miss Lillian was a child, people like her mother and father were
social outcasts who kept to themselves. But in 1920, when she was 12
years old, she talked her mother into going to church services —
even knowing her mother wouldn’t be able to hear what the minister
was saying.
“I didn’t want anyone to know my mother was deaf.. And I didn’t want
to attract attention. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of her. I was not.
So I sat and turned and I signed.. And she had to look down to look at
my fingers. And I tried to tell her what he was talking about,” she
said.
That Sunday, Miss Lillian found her purpose in life. She reasoned
that if she could help her mother understand the hearing world, she
could interpret for other deaf people, as well. Over the many years
that followed, she helped set up skill standards for interpreters and
helped organize the Texas Society of Interpreters for the Deaf.
But just as importantly, she helped change a devastating stereotype.
“Do you think that because of your work and your life, deaf people
are better accepted now than they were before?” KPRC Local 2 anchor
Bill Balleza asked.
“That’s why I stayed with it. — because people said, “Miss Lillian,
why do you work with the deaf and dumb people?’ They thought the word
dumb meant stupid,” she said.
These days Miss Lillian’s work continues at Woodhaven Baptist Church
in Spring Branch where she teaches others to sign so that they can
minister to the deaf community.
From helping her mother understand a minister 88 years ago, she is
helping ministers like Pastor Arthur Craig make themselves understood
to the deaf.
“And if you understand then that work is successful,” she said. “So,
it’s very important that you feel free to ask me questions.”
Miss Lillian is a natural-born teacher. And she takes her students
where she finds them, even during television interviews.
“At the end of our conversation, after I had presented Miss Lillian
with her much deserved Jefferson Award, she, in characteristic
humility, said others in her circle deserved it just as much,”
Balleza said.
Miss Lillian had this to offer in parting.
“And if you get what I have shared with you to help others, then my
conversation with you has been very helpful,” Miss Lillian said. If
you know of a person deserving to be recognized with a Jefferson
Award, fill out an online application.
link: http://www.click2houston.com/news/15244783/detail.html
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