Deaf Biographies

Louis Frisino

Louis Frisino has been interested in art since childhood. His love for dogs and wildlife was an incentive to develop his talent. Deaf since birth, he attended the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, graduating in 1953.

He later graduated with honors from Maryland Institute College of Art, receiving at that time the Peabody Award. Since then he has exhibited in art festivals all along the Eastern seaboard, winning numerous awards for his work. He has done extensive art work including the drawing of 45 separate fish for the 1970 edition of Fishing in Maryland, published in Baltimore. In addition, his work can be seen in many art and specialty shops across the United States.

Andrew Foster

Andrew Foster was born in Ensley, Alabama and became the first Black Deaf person to earn a bachelor's

degree from Gallaudet University and the first to earn a master's degree from Eastern Michigan University.

After earning another master's from Seattle Pacific Christian College, he went to Africa in 1957. There he encountered cultures so oppressive of deaf people that parents often hid their deaf children at home or abandoned them altogether. Hearing missionaries told Foster that deaf children didn't even exist in Africa. He found deaf children and established schools for them—31 in all. Before he was done, he had established schools in countries including Benin, Congo, Chad, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon.

For much of his life he spent six months of the year in Africa establishing schools and the other six months in the United State raising money to support these schools. In 1970 Gallaudet granted him an honorary doctor of humane letter in recognition of his accomplishment. Andrew Foster met his untimely death in a plane crash in 1987 and the Black Deaf community lost an extraordinary leader.

I. King Jordan

Jordan lost his hearing while serving in the U.S. Navy. Undaunted, he received his bachelor's degree from Gallaudet University. After earning his master’s degree and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Tennessee, Jordan joined the faculty at Gallaudet. He later became the Dean of the College of Arts and Science, and then the first Deaf President in 1988.

Linda Bove

She was born on November 30, 1945 in Garfield, New Jersey to deaf parents. She majored in library science at Gallaudet University and received her bachelor's degree in 1968.

She then got into the acting profession and performed for the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) recently after it was formed in 1967. In 1970, she married Ed Waterstreet, another deaf performer from NTD.

She later made her debut on Sesame Street in 1971 as the character Linda the Librarian.  She brought sign language and Deaf Community issues into thousands of living rooms across the country (except mine, I guess). Her role on Sesame Street continued until 2003, now the longest running role on television for a deaf person in history.

Bove brought American Sign Language to the world through her Sesame Street books as well. One was Sesame Street Sign Language ABC with Linda Bove that taught how to sign words and letters to children.

Curtis Pride

Curtis was born in Washington D.C. on December 17, 1968. By the age of nine months, audio logical tests confirmed that he was profoundly deaf from birth. At age two, his parents moved to Silver Spring, Maryland and enrolled Curtis in the Montgomery County Public School System's Auditory Service infant program. He was then fully mainstreamed into his neighborhood schools from seventh grade until his graduation from John F. Kennedy High School in 1986.

In addition to graduating with a 3.6 GPA, Curtis was an outstanding high school athlete, excelling in the sports of baseball, basketball and soccer. He was a first team All-American soccer player and a member of the United States National Team that played in the Junior World Cup in Beijing, China. As a result of his play in that tournament, Curtis was named as one of the top 15 youth soccer players in the world in 1985.

After already accepting a full basketball scholarship to the College of William and Mary, Curtis was drafted in baseball by the New York Mets. Through a unique arrangement negotiated among the Pride family, the Mets and William and Mary, Curtis signed with the Mets as a professional baseball player while he also attended college as a full-time student athlete. From 1986 to 1990 Curtis was a four-year basketball starter at William and Mary while also playing baseball part-time in the Mets organization. He graduated from William and Mary in 1990 with a degree in finance.

In 1992, Curtis signed with the Montreal Expos as a minor league free agent. On September 23, 1993 he recorded his first major league hit - a memorable double that resulted in a five minute standing ovation from a capacity crowd at Montreal's Olympic Stadium.

Curtis has subsequently enjoyed a successful career in professional baseball, and played with the following major league teams: Detroit Tigers, 1996-1997; Atlanta Braves, 1998; Boston Red Sox 1997 and 2000; and Montreal Expos, 1993, 1995 and 2001. In 349 major league games, he has compiled a .256 batting average with 18 home runs, 76 RBI's and 28 stolen bases.

In 2008 he accepted the position as Head Baseball Coach at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.

Marlee Matlin

Marlee Beth Matlin was born on August 24, 1965, to Don and Libby Matlin; she was their third child. Marlee became deaf at the age of 18 months due to a bout with Roseola Infantum. That didn't stop her, though, from acting in a children's theatre company at age 7; she was Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." Her deafness never held her back. As an adult she said it so eloquently: "I have always resisted putting limitations on myself, both professionally and personally." Marlee studied Criminal Justice at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, and maintained her passion for acting after graduating. While performing on stage throughout Chicago and the Midwest, Marlee attracted notice for her performance in a production of the Tony award-winning play "Children of a Lesser God" and was cast in the movie version, Children of a Lesser God (1986). Although this was her film debut, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. While shooting her next movie. Walker (1987) in Nicaragua, big-hearted Marlee took time to visit both hearing and hearing-impaired children. She continued this tradition of visiting local children throughout her travels to Germany, England, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Canada, etc. Her interest in the criminal justice field played a part in her on screen career; she portrayed an Assistant D.A. in the TV series "Reasonable Doubts" (1991), while off screen she married police officer Kevin Grandalski on August 29, 1993. Marlee was nominated for an Emmy award in 1994 for her performance as Laurie Bey in the "Picket Fences" (1992) episode "Dancing Bandit." Marlee is also a spokeswoman for the National Captioning Institute. In 1995 she testified at a Congressional hearing, and helped get a law passed that requires all TV sets 13 inches or larger to be manufactured with built-in chips to provide "Closed Captioning" on their screens; this was a godsend for deaf viewers.

Marlee is currently serving as the national spokeswoman for the largest provider of TV Closed Captioning, and has spoken on behalf of "CC" in countries such as Australia, England, France and Italy. She also serves on the boards of a number of charitable organizations, including Very Special Arts, the Starlight Foundation, and other charities that primarily benefit children. As someone who loves children so much, it is only fitting that she has four of her own. Professionally, Marlee has even tried producing, being the Executive Producer for Where the Truth Lies (1999) (TV).

William “Dummy” Hoy

William Ellsworth “Dummy” Hoy (1862-1961) was the first deaf player to have a long career in the major leagues. He was born in 1862 in Houcktown, northern Ohio, graduated from Ohio School for the Deaf, began his professional career in 1886, played for several major-league teams from 1888 to 1902, and died in Cincinnati in 1961 at the age of 99 years and 5 months. He enjoyed a long and successful career in baseball: 18 seasons on professional teams, including 5 with the Cincinnati Red Stockings. He was one of the few players to have played in 4 of the 5 recognized major leagues: The National League, the short-lived Players’ League, the original American Association, and the American League.

Hoy was a small man, 5'4" or 5'5" tall, weighing 145-155 pounds, probably the shortest major-league outfielder in history. What he lacked in heft, he made up for in cunning and swiftness. He was a celebrated “flyhawk,” a great centerfielder, on a par with Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, and Tris Speaker.

Terrence Parkin

Parkin is South African, and was just 20 years old in 2000. He began swimming at age 12. He is married, and painting is his hobby.

In the 2000 Olympics Sydney, Australia Terrence Parkin won the Silver Medal in the 200 Meter Breaststroke. He also competed in the 2004 Athens Olympics. In the "hearing" Olympics he used strobe light signals to know when to start swimming. Plus, he did even better in deaf competition, winning two gold medals at the 2005 Deaflympics.

Kenny Walker

When football player Kenny Walker made his professional debut in the early 1990s, he became the first deaf player in the National Football League (NFL) in nearly twenty years. A defensive lineman with the Denver Broncos in 1991 and 1992, Walker became a hero among the hearing-impaired with his against-the odds success story. The 6-foot-4-inch, 260-pound player picked up his defensive calls by reading other players' lips, and distinguished himself on the playing field with a strong performance. After two years with the Broncos, Walker joined the Calgary Stampeders, becoming the first deaf player in the history of the Canadian Football League (CFL).

Born on April 6, 1967, in Crane, Texas, Kenny Walker was the youngest of six children born to a cafeteria-worker mother and an oil-field worker father. He was two years old when he contracted spinal meningitis, which left him deprived of his ability to hear. While his family helped him with his disability, his two older brothers, Darren and Gus, made sure their little brother did not fall prey to self-pity. "If I was pouting, or wanting sympathy, they'd deck me," Walker told Tom Keyser of the Calgary Herald.

After young Walker's parents separated, his mother relocated with her children to Denver, Colorado. Here Walker attended a deaf program at the University of Denver. A natural athlete, he played street sports with friends, and made the football team as a starter in the tenth grade. As a defensive end and split end, he was a fast, capable player who excelled on the field. Upon graduation from high school he was offered a football scholarship from the University of Nebraska.

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