A Deaf Educator and Advocate

By - Nicole Leigh White

Ann Eckberg was born in 1947. Although she lost her hearing when she was nine years old, she never considered the loss a “handicap.” In fact, she learned sign language and spent her life using her voice and helping others to do the same. She earned a bachelor’s degree in education at Gallaudet University in 1969 and then a Master of Fine Arts in art at Catholic University in 1972. In 1970, Eckberg was hired as an art teacher by the Vocational Department at the Nebraska School for the Deaf (NSD), a primary and secondary residential school that specialized in the education of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Eckberg worked at the school for nearly thirty years. In 1981, she became the first deaf individual to teach at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). Eckberg also did her share of teaching outside the classroom, advocating tirelessly for the Deaf community throughout her adult life, especially to improve Deaf education. Eckberg suffered a heart attack in her home and passed away at the age of 54.

“Discover the way life should be”

The place of disability as a concept . . . has simply not been understood or excavated because it’s not in the archive.

–Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “What Her Body Taught”

So reads the idyllic slogan of Princeton, Illinois. In this same small city, on February 16, 1947, Ann Elizabeth Eckberg was born. Nine years later, she would be the only child in her neighborhood to contract spinal meningitis—an infection that would permanently rob her of her ability to hear. Because she had been struck with this tragic and debilitating handicap, her day-to-day life was to be characterized by struggle and isolation. Eckberg, it seemed, was the victim of a cruel fate. Yet, she bore her misfortune with an unassuming, angelic patience. Until her untimely death, she remained sequestered from the world and meekly carried on with life—the way that it shouldn’t have been.

Ann Eckberg would have most likely loathed, and perhaps even laughed at, this version of her existence. It is what disability scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson would call a “crippled saint story”: an account that accentuates the incapacity—the limitations—of its subject, and that, in actuality, only reflects the narrow perceptions of its non-“crippled” narrator (“Body” 29). Unfortunately, though, this melodramatic and myopic vision of Eckberg’s life typifies the narrative lens through which most able-bodied Americans have been conditioned to understand disability. As a result, most temporarily-abled citizens are blinded by a condescending pity for their disabled counterparts—to such a great extent, in fact, that many become convinced that the experiences of people with disabilities are somehow qualitatively different, and maybe even “less than,” their own. It would probably be easier and more convenient to uphold this hierarchy, to proceed with the tale of Eckberg’s life in this pat, formulaic vein. But, her tale is infinitely more complex and compelling than the opening storyline could possibly divulge, and quite simply, she deserves further consideration.

Ann Eckberg did not see her deafness as a master status, a disabling condition, or a handicap; she simply regarded it as an “inconvenience,” a mere “hearing problem” (Gauger 1B). Making sure that this opinion was recognized, she once brazenly declared, “It’s often the hearing people who aren’t happy with our being deaf. I’m perfectly happy as I am” (Bechtold 6). Eckberg didn’t feel sorry for herself, and by the same token, she would have heartily rejected our sympathy. Similarly, we wouldn’t be doing Eckberg any favors by discussing her only in terms of her hearing deficit, because she was endowed with so many talents and exceptional in so many respects.

That being said, I will proceed with my narrative. Ann Eckberg was a petite woman who nevertheless established herself as an overpowering physical presence wherever she went. Although she was capable of communicating via speech, she simply preferred not to. She was an outspoken introvert who possessed an exceedingly keen intellect and conveyed an “intensity that bordered on passion” (Bechtold 6). All at once, Eckberg had the capacity to joke light-heartedly about decidedly-misfortunate occurrences, the gravity to create and inspire soul-stirring art, and more than enough grit to pit herself against any status quo that she deemed unjust. Yes, Ann Eckberg was deaf, but that fact did not deter her from forcefully exercising her voice, nor did it hinder her efforts to make that voice heard throughout the span of her life.

Determination Triumphs Adversity

The hearing world did not generally share Eckberg’s self-affirming outlook concerning deafness. In 1956, immediately following the onset of her hearing impairment, a doctor suggested that Lawrence and Letha Eckberg’s daughter was, by virtue of her newly acquired “disability,” incapable of learning. Subsequently, he advised them to send her to a state institution for the “mentally retarded” (Pritchard 7). At the time, medical authorities attempted to paint these publically-funded establishments as the most optimal setting for disabled children. Many parents, faced with limited educational avenues for their children, agreed to commit them to these “asylums”. However, an often gruesome reality was housed within these institutes: many were unsanitary, overcrowded, under-supervised, poorly funded, plagued with abuse, and predicated on the undifferentiated treatment of residents’ various conditions and needs. Had Eckberg ended up at one of these institutions, the course of her life would have been drastically different; fortunately, though, Eckberg’s parents recognized vast potential in their daughter. They ultimately opted to reject the doctor’s recommendation and chose instead to send her to public schools in Bureau County, Illinois.

However, Eckberg’s experiences in a “mainstreamed” municipal school setting would pose a different set of challenges. Mainstreaming, an educational trend in America that began in the 1960s, reflected the belief that disabled students could derive superior benefits, such as social normalization and assimilation, through integrated instruction. Yet, during the 50s and 60s, the philosophy of mainstreaming merely offered a “façade of normalcy,” as most public schools demonstrated little concern for the intellectual growth of non-hearing children outside of requisite speech instruction  (Bechtold 6). This held true throughout Eckberg’s formative school years. When she entered a mainstreamed classroom at the age of nine, she could not yet lip-read, but she was nevertheless expected to learn in an intensely aurally-centered environment. All through primary and secondary school she was deprived of seemingly essential accommodations, such as a note-taker and an interpreter. Moreover, she was never supplied with an alternative means of communication to help in facilitating interactions with instructors and peers. Thus, her earliest educational experiences were characterized by solitude and “filled with frustrations” that had accumulated in the absence of any fundamental support for her academic endeavors (Bechtold 6).

In spite of the overwhelming limitations placed upon Eckberg’s education, her insatiable hunger for knowledge and unshakable determination to challenge naysayers enabled her to sustain tremendous academic growth throughout her youth. In 1965, she graduated from Walnut High School and was recruited to pursue an undergraduate career in a preeminent program exclusively for the deaf in Washington, D.C. at Gallaudet University. During her time there, she undertook intensive instruction in manual communication. As Eckberg acquired this new, “natural” sign language and her happiness grew exponentially, she became increasingly able to engage with her cohorts in more expressive and truly meaningful ways than she had previously thought possible (Bechtold 6).

Sign language empowered Eckberg, allowing her to flourish throughout the rest of her college years. By 1969, she had graduated from Gallaudet with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education. She went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree with an endorsement in art and deaf education from the Catholic University of America in 1972. Later in life, she would convey a cheeky sense of pride in her scholastic achievements, arguing that they had helped her transcend the artificially imposed barriers of her youth. She stated, “I don’t like seeing people tell me I can’t do something … I remember when I was growing up that people said I couldn’t go to school because I was deaf. And I went to college and graduated, and I got a master’s degree and 30 hours beyond that” (Gauger 1B). Eckberg had a knack for “confounding skeptics,” and she derived great joy from her ability to disrupt the misconceptions concerning deafness that were harbored by her hearing cohorts (Gauger 1B). Thanks to her enriching higher educational experiences, Eckberg was able to stride confidently into her adult life, equipped with the tools necessary to deconstruct the oppressive practices of the society with which she was surrounded.

Making a Difference

In 1970, Eckberg was hired as an art teacher by the Vocational Department at the Nebraska School for the Deaf (NSD), a primary and secondary residential school that specialized in the education of deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Students who attended NSD regarded their alma mater as the only place where they weren’t constantly reminded of their deafness—a place where they could be at home, so-to-speak. Eckberg worked at the school for nearly thirty years and came to regard it not only as her workplace, but also as her second and truest family. Throughout her time at the school, she would impart immeasurable knowledge and encouragement to “hundreds of children,” many of whom went on to pursue college careers, engage in lucrative professions, and raise prosperous families (Eckberg 1B). In addition to the time that Eckberg spent instructing students, she assisted with a wide variety of extracurricular activities, including national art competitions, Brownies, Drama Club, Student Council, and Senior Class sponsorship. Students knew her as Ms. Eckberg, the teacher who held her pupils to high standards, but who was universally “loved” for the playful, open, and unswervingly devoted disposition that she demonstrated toward her students (Darnall Personal Interview).

Art class with Ms. Eckberg was never just “fun and games,” nor was it a tedious succession of macramé, pottery, and painting projects (Bechtold 6). Through her courses, she proffered deaf schoolchildren, most of whom existed in an intensely “visual world,” an invaluable avenue of imaginative expression. Her classes fostered a sense of community amongst students while helping them experience catharsis through the creative process. Further, engaging in artistic pursuits allowed them to achieve a sense of success that aurally-based subjects wouldn’t have generally provided.

But Eckberg’s influence as a teacher extended far beyond the walls of NSD. In 1981, she became the first deaf individual to teach at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Just prior to commissioning Eckberg’s expertise, the University had implemented affirmative action hiring policies and had begun to provide beneficial (albeit uneven) accommodations to deaf students. Presumably, the University did so in response to the nation’s evolving policies pertaining to the civil rights of disabled citizens (see contextual essay). Deaf scholar Brenda Jo Brueggemann has suggested that the presence of disability in college classrooms “changes and challenges the rhetoric of higher learning considerably” (“Body” 27). The truth of this assertion can be detected in Eckberg’s time at UNO. During her time at the University, she was self-possessed and never doubted her qualifications, authority, or capacity to teach manual communication to sizable bodies of hearing students. In the five years she taught sign language courses at the establishment, she instilled undergraduates with the skills required to communicate appropriately and effectively with deaf students and their community—the foremost objective of the Teaching the Hearing Impaired program. Wordlessly and “effortlessly,” she garnered the attention and admiration of her hearing students, broadening their formerly limited understanding of the deaf experience (Pritchard 7).

All Good Things...

t is commonly said that “all good things must come to an end”; this axiom holds true concerning Eckberg’s time at UNO. In 1984, the Board of Regents threatened to cut the Teaching the Hearing Impaired program, despite the facts that the program was growing and its graduates were in high demand throughout the Omaha metro. Amidst this controversy, the program’s founder, Barbara Luetke-Stahlman, left the University. Shortly thereafter, Eckberg followed suit. Although future students sustained an incalculable educational loss as a result of Eckberg’s resignation, her legacy is still alive in the numerous special educators across the nation who once reaped immense benefits from her presence. And, thanks to the oppositional efforts of Eckberg and proponents of the Special Education Department at UNO, the degree path, which was renamed the Education of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing program, is still thriving today (to read more about this program, visit http://coe.unomaha.edu/sped/index.php).

Eckberg also did her share of teaching outside of classrooms, advocating tirelessly for the deaf community throughout her adult life. Her primary concentration was that of improving deaf education. She participated actively on local boards and panels, wholeheartedly voicing her support of residential programs, deaf teachers, and manual communication. These efforts did not go unnoticed. In 1986, journalist Lynne Bechtold wrote an article praising Eckberg’s professional and public advocacy (see Figure 9). In the piece, Eckberg drew upon her own experiences; in doing so, she expressed feelings that the progress of deaf children was hampered by prevailing, orally-biased medical and pedagogical approaches to deafness. Proponents of oralism, she maintained, too often advised parents to place their non-hearing youths in schools that were simply “not suited to their needs” (Bechtold 6). She vociferously railed against oralist forces and underscored the remarkable, yet frequently untapped, abilities of deaf schoolchildren. It was in this spirit that she declared, “They [parents] might be told, ‘Your child can learn to talk. He can be normal.’ What they don’t consider is what the child has in his mind. You can spend 12 years teaching a deaf child to say a few words, but if he can’t read or write, what’s the point? You must consider what is in his mind” (Bechtold 6). Eckberg’s activism in the public sphere revolved around her fervent wish for deaf children to receive the education that they deserved—the education that she had never been afforded as a child, one founded upon the equality of deaf and hearing children, characterized by additional support services, and committed to offering more than mere “token communication.”

Educational Rights

Ms. Eckberg lobbied continually for the educational rights of deaf children. Likewise, she sought to improve the social conditions and assert the civil rights of all deaf citizens. Outside of school hours, she worked as a news editor and secretary for the Omaha Association of the Deaf, a social group geared toward fostering a sense of community amongst deaf residents. Furthermore, she served on the Midwest Telephone Relay Board to ensure that optimally accessible, high-quality services were being provided for regional deaf citizens who relied on TTY systems to communicate via telephone (to read more about TTY, visit http://www.michdhh.org/assistive_devices/text_telephone.html). She participated in these activities throughout the 1970s and 80s, eventually waging a much more public battle for the deaf community.

Striving for Justice

In 1988, a local judge told Ann Eckberg that she could not serve jury duty, citing her deafness as a disqualifier. Most people would have resigned themselves to the overawing authority of law, but Eckberg was not like most people. On the spot, she indicted the judge, who had pulled her aside from a line of prospective jurors. In an unflinchingly frank tone, before everyone present at the Douglas County courthouse, she asserted that he was discriminating against her. Of the incident, she recounted, “I could have told them that I didn’t want to serve and gotten off, but I felt that I had to fight to get what was mine” (Geer 17). In an added comment, she stressed that this fight was not just for her own benefit, professing, “I’ve had students who say they can’t. I told them that I don’t want to see them say that. Because they can do anything they want… Sometimes the kids, you would tell them ‘You can do it’ . . . But then they go out and see the world where they’re not allowed to participate in things, like jury duty. That’s a right for every American citizen” (Gauger 1B). Eckberg was determined to stand as a positive example in the eyes of her fledgling students. Her tenacious insistence on participating in the public sphere sent the court into a state of upheaval, as legal officials and attorneys deliberated intensively over the question of whether or not a deaf individual could realistically participate in the judicial process.

Thanks to her unbending persistence, Eckberg was ultimately allowed to serve on the jury. However, throughout the process of the trial, she was repeatedly subjected to inequitable treatment. For instance, throughout the medical malpractice trial, the court refused to hire more than one interpreter for Eckberg and barred the interpreter that they did provide from taking breaks at any point during the grueling, hours-long periods of signing. Additionally, after the trial had wrapped up, the presiding judge barred her from participating in a post-trial survey in which jurors were asked to write “whether they thought the presence of an interpreter had interfered with the case” (Geer 17). Although she was “shocked” to experience this level of injustice in an establishment that was supposed to be a paragon of justice, she never second-guessed her crusade to participate. Through her resistance, she shone as a beacon of opportunity to the deaf community; in the process, she had once again dumbfounded the hearing world by demonstrating her immense competence.

Closing of the Nebraska School for the Deaf

Despite their numerous, hard-earned triumphs, Eckberg and the deaf community in Nebraska experienced a tremendous overhaul in 1998. Amidst overstated budget reports and a shortsighted institutional thrust to mainstream deaf children, the Nebraska School for the Deaf was forced to close its doors (see Figure 10) (see contextual essay). Of the period of time immediately following the demise of the school, Eckberg stated: “I felt betrayed…  I needed a break from all the heartache and fighting our NSD family had gone through over the years. So instead of looking for another teaching job, I worked to change the mindset of those with the power to make changes. This was not to be” (Eckberg B1). Discouraged but refusing to resign herself, Eckberg looked for teaching jobs throughout the city of Omaha.

Yet, regardless of her outstanding educational attainments and extensive teaching experience, she was habitually denied work on the basis of her “disability.” For example, when interviewing at area schools, she was rarely provided with an interpreter and was often expected to read lips or communicate with potential employers over short telephone exchanges. When she applied to Westside hoping to obtain a position as a sign language instructor, she was rejected in favor of a mime with no teaching certificate. She was eventually able to obtain part-time work at Lewis and Clark Middle School, but the bigoted employment practices of school districts across the city had left a bitter taste in her mouth. In May of 2000, Eckberg wrote to the Lincoln Journal Star, proclaiming, “Nebraska has effectively slammed the door on deaf people as teachers. Any deaf person who aspires to become a teacher will have to take their expertise and knowledge to another state. Nebraska has said loud and clear, we do not want to have to educate deaf children with deaf teachers.”

Legacy

Just over a year after this passionate editorial was published, Eckberg suffered a heart attack in her home and passed away at the age of 54. After her death, her surviving family put her personal possessions up for public auction. Fortunately, a graduate of NSD successfully bid on these items, and today, they are duly preserved in the Nebraska Deaf Heritage Museum and Cultural Center Archives. When I visited the museum recently, I had the privilege of perusing some of Eckberg’s effects. Her photographs, most of which documented her time at NSD, emanated the playful warmth that was so central to her being (see Figures 11a and 11b).

I was also able to set my eyes upon several pieces of art that had been created by Eckberg, including an exquisitely stained vase, a self-styled silhouette, and a realistic landscape picturing a stellar sunset, foregrounded by a rural irrigation system (see Figures 12a–12c). Yet, the piece that struck me most was a deeply expressionistic oil painting that depicted a massive tidal wave on the verge of devouring a lone, relatively small, and shadowy figure (see Figure 12d). I couldn’t help but think—could this destructive force-of-nature be a stand-in for the oppressive hearing world? Is that solitary, spectral shape, in fact, some version of Ann Eckberg? Regrettably, I’ll never know.

But I do know this: Ann Eckberg was and is an incredible human woman who demonstrated a singular dedication to nurturing the minds of countless students of all ages. A large portion of able-bodied America remains convinced that so-called “disabled” citizens are, to some extent, different from them. Eckberg’s story enables us to engage with this puzzling, widespread notion in a fresh way. Was she so different? The answer is complicated. As a result of her impairment, she encountered unique challenges throughout her life. Most of these difficulties did not stem from the actual physical fact of deafness; rather, they were a product of the overwhelmingly biased social institutions that threatened to usurp her control over her own life.

In spite of the limitations imposed upon her life, Eckberg was extraordinarily accomplished, an intellectual powerhouse, and uncommonly optimistic. In truth, she was different from your average citizen. But by no means was she substandard. It is impossible to ascertain if she, in her last days, continued to harbor the same acute level of disappointment with the state of deaf education that she had conveyed in her editorial. I think that she would be happy with certain developments in the domain of deaf education. For instance, in 2006, the Nebraska State Board of Education officially recognized American Sign Language as a legitimate language. On the other hand, though, as deaf residential schools are progressively becoming extinct and special educational programs continue to be amongst the first to undergo scrutiny for budget cuts, I believe that she would contend that there’s still much work to be done. And, in the same breath, she would say that the onus is on us to do it.

Author’s Note: Writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once declared,  “Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas.” In the process of recovering Ann Eckberg’s story, I’ve come to appreciate the accuracy of this assertion. I strove quixotically to contain her to these few pages, but she embodied so much—was bursting with so many ambitions, contradictions, and passions—that, try as I might, I could never fully evoke her person through my formula. Her gravestone is bare, containing no passages—just two roses, her name, and the years of her birth and death (see Figure 13).  And, though I’ve had the good fortune to discover more about Eckberg, she remains, by my estimation, rather elusive. But, I think that it’s best that way.