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

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Page berg had lost his hearing at the age of twelve. In 1950 he heard about Gallaudet through the headmaster of his high school, who wrote a letter supporting his application for admission. In the spring of 1950, President Elstad, who was touring Europe, visited
Croneberg in Sweden. Croneberg recalls that Elstad "examined my skills in speaking and reading English, and was satisfied.
Next fall, I was at Gallaudet." By 1955 Croneberg had earned his BA. in English from Gallaudet. In 1959 he completed an MA. in English at Catholic
University, becoming one of the first deaf people to receive a graduate degree from a "normal" school. However, the conditions were appalling there were no interpreters (no one had even thought of the idea yet" Croneberg says, and as he could not lipread he had to rely on fellow students to take notes for him. In some instances he didn't bother to attend class he simply arranged to meet the student who was kind enough to take notes for him. "It wasn't exactly the ideal educational setting" he recalls, 'but it was that or nothing for deaf students."25
While Croneberg was earning his MA, Detmold hired him as an assistant in the English Departmentpart of Detmold's plan to hire qualified deaf faculty. In 1957 Croneberg was promoted to instructor, and in 1959 he became an assistant professor.
If Stokoe was impervious to the political and personal attacks on his research, Croneberg was practically oblivious "I wasn't much interested in what others thought" he recalls. "We had a job to do and we did it. Period."26
Stokoe's other collaborator on the dictionary was a young student named Dorothy Sueoka Casterline, who had arrived at
Gallaudet in 1955, the same year as Stokoe. Casterline recalls that Stokoe "taught Chaucer in my humanities course, and I was the only student in his nineteenth-century literature class we'd meet in quiet corners in the Gallaudet Library" Like Croneberg,
Casterline was not born deaf she lost her hearing at the age of thirteen, when she was in the seventh grade.
I finished the seventh grade in public school, then entered Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind and remained therefor three or four years. I entered Gallaudet College (now Uni-

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