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Sign Language Studies enabled us to know everything that was going on in the field. Then we'd have the opportunity to decide for ourselves what was good and what was not so good. And we'd say, "Lets take this good stuff and do something with it let's try to see what's wrong with the bad stuff" We wouldn't say, "Oh well, he or she doesn't know enough about this to support this study" Working with Bill and writing for Sign Language Studies, you never felt as if you were competing with anybody you were making contributions to a body of knowledge. Editing, composing, and marketing the journal was in itself a full-time job, yet Stokoe continued to present papers at conferences, oversee the work of the lab, review scores of books and manuscripts, and serve as mentor to linguists and researchers from allover the world. Virginia Volterra remembers "constantly exchanging ideas and seeking his advice on problems and manuscripts I sent to him through our networks or through our meetings whenever I visited the States."19
Stokoe's primary concern, however, continued to be reaching as wide an audience as possible. According to Harry Markowicz,
the crucial goal was, and still is,
to make sign language acceptable as a mode of communication for deaf adults in the community at large and of greater importance for the welfare of the Deaf community, to make it acceptable as the medium for the educating of deaf children. In relation to this problem, psycholinguistic investigation of language acquisition will, it is to be hoped, shed light on how linguistic competence is established in an individual. This knowledge could then be applied to determine ways of educating deaf persons so that ultimately they can achieve true bilingualism sign language competence for interpersonal communication in the Deaf community and linguistic competence . . . in written English, so that they can also partake of the common culture of the society in which they live.20
Bill Stokoe's focus hadn't changed at all since he first satin a class at Gallaudet and observed the deaf students. In 1977, at a conference of the Niagara Linguistic Society, he reiterated the

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