Carrie Dixon was a Deaf lady, who died with her husband and grandchild, in a tragic accident in the mid-nineteen seventies. She had a quiet life of "privilege" and was most certainly a "born Deaf" and culturally Deaf person. Carrie, as far as history goes,..should have been long forgotten,..not even a footnote in the history of Hearing or Deaf affairs. She was quiet..(unlike your truly :D), and she had the good manners not to come back and try to "rub the noses of others on their own mistakes."

Carrie Dixon believed that a bridge of understanding could be built between the Deaf World and the Hearing World and took the first steps in the Canton, Ohio area to try and build that bridge. She taught both Deaf and Hearing individuals the basics of American Sign Language in the old Red Feather Building in Canton,..Ohio at a time when it was illegal to use sign language in classes for the Deaf in the public schools. Carrie taught Deaf kids that it was "O-K' to decide to learn and use sign language as their chief means of communication..if they so chose.

This "it's-ok-to-make-your-own-choices" idea was revolutionary even in the seventies as "oralism" was the only "acceptable way" to teach Deaf any form of language in those times.

(Remember,..back then,...even the thought of Galladet College..having a "Deaf" president was unheard of!! Seventies establishment thinking on "Deaf possibilities:

Heck! If you teach a Deaf kid that they can make their own choices that kid might grow up and think that he/she can do more than become a type-setter or broom pusher as an adult! Why a Deaf girl might even think that she could grow up and become Miss America!! Heresy!! Heresy!!)

To make matters worse,..Carrie helped start a Deaf church where the hearing and the deaf could mix freely and use sign language socially as a means of communication in a public place!!

Oh,..the HORROR!------(This comment is a piece of social commentary on my part as I remember the attitudes of those times!!)

I have read in the journal of a friend that:

"Carrie Dixon,,for all of her good intentions and volunteer work,.in spite of all of her services to folks in mental institutions,..will be appropriately forgotten as far as history goes or as far as anyone's living memory goes. That is right and proper as all she did was upset the notions..."of socially prominant people and tore down the established order of the leadership of the sign language interpreter and Deaf pathetics." She had the strange notion that the people , who were born without sound in their lives, could lead normal lives and by her altogether inappropriate activities....actually taught the children of the socially respectable hearing to believe this delusion!"

(Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrge!!

Carrie Dixon was guilty,

.....oh yes,

..guilty,..I say,

....of TEACHING THE CHILDREN OF THE HEARING AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE!!)

As far as I have heard, Carrie's life and her marriage was happy. She and her husband, who was also totally Deaf, raised four beautiful and successful daughters,..one Akron University college professor with a PhD;...one teacher of the Deaf,..recently retired from working at the Ohio State School for the Deaf;..one, the wife of a wealthy local enterpreneur; and one, who the last that I heard,..was a teacher of the Deaf in an Ohio city close by here. That would not be a bad average as to the outcome of her children even for a "normal" hearing woman.

Yet,..Carrie Dixon's legacy included far more than her own blood children......

(more on Carrie later!! gotta leave!!)