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

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Page At about the same time, Stokoe invited the linguist Henry Lee Smith, Jr, one of his two original mentors in Buffalo, to visit
Gallaudet and address the faculty of the English Department. "Bill was so excited about Smith's visit" one faculty member recalls, "but we simply didn't understand a word he was saying. And Bill was describing himself in articles and lectures as a linguist, something that we found a bit ostentatious."
By 1969 Bill Stokoe had been at Gallaudet for fourteen years. Perhaps he wished that his colleagues understood and supported his work, but he admitted only to feeling "a restlessness of a mild sort" 47 He applied for two positions one as Dean of Arts and Sciences at State University College at Buffalo and one as Chairman of the English Department at State University College at Oswego. He was interviewed at Buffalo but was not offered the position. To most academics, Gallaudet was still a backwater for "handicapped" students, and although Stokoe's research had won recognition and respect among linguists, it is quite possible that those who interviewed him didn't know quite what to make of the man who had written the first dictionary of American
Sign Language based on linguistic principles.
What is most amazing about Stokoe's job search is that George Detmold, his best friend and confidant, knew nothing about it.
Stokoe's reticence on the subject exemplified what Detmold once described as "that other side of Bill, that very private side that kept him from telling me for almost five years that his only brother was dead."48
Stokoe's desire for change is understandable, particularly if one remembers that he and Ruth were from upstate New York. In Stokoe's mother had died, and now his father was seventy-nine years old and living alone on the family farm in Livingston
County. It would be good to be closer to him. Ruth and Bill Stokoe's daughter, Helen, had gotten married in 1968 and was also living in upstate New York. In addition, many of Bill's and Ruth's aunts, uncles, and cousins still lived in western New York.
Although Bill and Ruth Stokoe had established many close friendships in the Washington area, it would have been good to go home again.

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