Church marks Deaf Day

Daughter of deaf parents draws upon positive experiences, amusing decisions.

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By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer 10:35 PM Saturday, April 24, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — The deaf community Marianna Olsen Stewart knew in New York during the 1950s is different from the more empowered deaf communities of today.

“Hearing people were revered as all-knowing,” said Stewart. “My parents considered me even as a child as the all-knowing one.

“I didn’t only interpret,” she said, “I made decisions” — at times with amusing results.

“I picked out this really awful yellow couch for their living room,” Stewart said. “We had to get these plastic covers for it because it was awful and it was velvet.”

But if her position as the hearing child in an otherwise deaf family had its challenges, it had its blessings, and Stewart considers herself lucky to have grown up with “the best of both worlds,” hearing and deaf.

Her experiences and those of others like her will be celebrated today, April 25, during Mother-Father Deaf Day at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 201 N. Limestone St.

Worship services will begin at 10:30 a.m. A program will follow at noon.

And much on Stewart’s mind will be the legacy of love she has from her parents and the larger deaf community.

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