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

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Page that he "would never get real Ph.D.'s to come to Gallaudet." 16 But Detmold's greatest pleasure stemmed from the fact that his best friend would join him at Gallaudet.
George Detmold and Bill Stokoe had met at Cornell University in 1937, when Detmold was a junior and Stokoe a sophomore.
They became acquainted in the fencing room, where Detmold was assistant coach. Fencing became one of the many interests they would share during their long friendship (which continues to the present day they also enjoyed sailing, hunting, shooting,
tennis, drama, and literature. Both men remained at Cornell for graduate work Detmold wrote his master's thesis on
Shakespeare's Coriolanus and received his PhD. in literature after completing a dissertation on the origins of drama. Stokoe's dissertation was entitled "The Work of the Redactors of Sir Launfal, Richard Coeur de Lion and Sir Degaré."
These topics were better preparation fora career at Gallaudet than one might think. Detmold directed plays with deaf actors at
Gallaudet; it was he who encouraged Gil Eastman, the author of Sign Me Alice, to complete graduate work at the Catholic
University of America and to return to Gallaudet to chair the Theater Arts Department. Stokoe's lack of formal linguistic training
(with the exception of two undergraduate courses) may have helped him see language in an unconventional way, and his translations of Old and Middle English poetry and literature certainly contributed to his appreciation of the variety and richness of languages and his understanding of the changes they undergo.
Before coming to Gallaudet both Detmold and Stokoe had had limited but positive experience with deaf people. Near the farm where Stokoe grew up lived a deaf blacksmith. Stokoe remembers that the blacksmith "had a pad right near the doorway into his forge where you could write down what you wanted, but inmost cases he would just take a look at what you carried in and know what had to be done to fix it . . . . He did beautiful work, and he was very independentyou knew that he observed everything that went on in the village Detmold had known a deaf man in Aurora, New York, who umpired at local softball games. "He was a good umpire because nobody could argue with him" Detmold recalls.18

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