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Page Moreover Bill was intellectually far above most of the members of the English Department . . . . As for Bill's research, it promoted ASL as a true language, something that, in the eyes of many in the department, demoted English. Since their livelihoods depended upon their English competencies, the English faculty felt threatened by Bill's research. Some deaf faculty felt the same" Lou Fant, who later came to appreciate the value of Stokoe's research, remembers the feelings of jealousy and resentment engendered by Stokoe's close relationship with Detmold:
I learned early on that Bill and George Detmold were very close friends. . . . I still have a memo I wrote to George proposing that the college establish a Department of Manual Communication. The department would, among other things,
carry on research into "a) improving the learning of manual communication and (b) exploring the effects of manual communication on the intellectual and social development of deaf children" (Notice the term "manual communication."
That's how we referred to ASL in those days. It had a clinical, clean, academic sound to it) Anyway, George sent me back a memo, and I quote it in its entirety "Thank you very much for your memorandum concerning a Department of
Manual Communication. I have not had time to study it as carefully as I should, but can assure you that I will give it the attention it deserves as soon as possible" My memo was four pages long and I felt slighted that he had given me such a curt, terse response. I concluded that he didn't think it deserved much of his attention. I never heard anymore from
George about my proposalI like to think it was too far ahead of its time for serious consideration. What I thought at the time was that George sensed I was trying to move in on Bill's territory and he wasn't going to have any part of it. I
chuckle now at the silliness of it all, but at the time I resented Bill because I blamed him and his pal, George, for nipping my idea in the bud without so much as a whole-page memo. The incident fueled my resentment of Bill and his work.32
Robert Panara recalls the reaction of the deaf faculty to Stokoe's work:

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