Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author

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Page deaf student at the graduate or undergraduate level who is interested in doing research in sign language or deaf communication.
Bill Stokoe knew nothing about the approaching celebration. Baker-Shenk recalls the plan to lure him onstage fora surprise presentation of the Festschrift. She told him, "Were going to give an award to someone, and since you're Bill Stokoe, it would mean so much if you would present it to him. Just hand it to him. You don't have to say anything" She explained to him that she would appear with him onstage, along with Gil Eastman, Ralph White (president of the National Association of the Deaf),
and Dennis Cokely. Stokoe "was soused to being an honorary figure that he didn't even ask me questions" she says. 'He just told me to tell him what to do and when to do it."
When the time came the five of them were sitting in a row onstage, facing more than two thousand people in the ballroom. "The first person got up" Baker-Shenk recalls,
and started talking about the history of the deaf and of American Sign Language. Then the next person got up and added to it. It was all rehearsed, of course. We had talked about it and planned who was going to say what very carefully. I was the speaker directly before Bill.
Now, by this time he was standing right next tome and holding the box I had given him. He was starting to look around a little bit, wondering why no one was left onstage to whom he would give this thing. But it still didn't click. As I spoke, I
began to narrow my comments down more and more, talking about this man who had done such and such a thing, until finally it became clear that I could only bespeaking about one person. Bill started to look down at the box, then he looked around rather helplessly, then he looked at the box again. It was a funny, wonderful moment. I finally said that the man we were talking about, the man we had gathered to honor, was William C. Stokoe. At that point, Bill bent over ever so slightly he told me later that his knees almost gave way and he was trying not to fall over. When he opened the box, he found the book, Sign Language and the Deaf Community, with his picture reprinted from the Washington Post article]
and his name on the cover. He stood there

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