Travels with Eleanor #5: Making a Difference – by Nan Brooks

Eleanor Roosevelt

A few days after my first performance of Dear Mrs. Roosevelt in Bloomington, Indiana, I received a phone call from a woman who wanted to tell me a story about Eleanor. It would be the first of many over the next twenty years, but this is one that has stayed with me. The caller’s name was Mrs. Huntington and she hastened to tell me that she was hard of hearing.

“Most of the people in my family were partly deaf,” she told me, “but we never talked about it.” She explained that it was common that “handicaps” were considered personal failures of some kind or punishment for family secrets. She told me with tears in her voice how embarrassed she was when she couldn’t hear. Teachers scolded her when she didn’t understand a lesson, other children made fun of her and refused to play with her. She wasn’t welcome in playground games. Even when a teacher noticed that she couldn’t hear and encouraged her parents to have her hearing tested, they refused. A person who couldn’t hear well was an embarrassment to the family. “And none of them could hear very well,” she said.

Then in 1951, Eleanor Roosevelt came to town. Mrs. Huntington was a newly married young woman at the time and went to hear the former first lady at the huge university auditorium. Eleanor walked out on the stage and gave her speech in her distinctive high-pitched voice. “Everyone complained about her voice in those days, and they made fun of her looks,” remembered Mrs. Huntington. “But there sure was a big crowd that day.”  When it came time for questions and answers from the audience, the first lady said, “I am partly deaf; it runs in my family. So you will have to help me hear you because I can’t do a thing about it. Please speak up!”  In that moment, the young Mrs. Huntington’s world changed.

“All of a sudden, I wasn’t a failure anymore. I was like Eleanor Roosevelt, someone people made fun of, but they also could admire.” Eleanor had spoken to the crowd that day about the importance of democracy and urged her listeners to contribute to their community in any way they could. Mrs. Huntington was stunned to think she had something to offer but resolved to find a way to be useful to the community. 

Then she remembered reading about a new department at Indiana University called Speech and Hearing Sciences. She summoned her courage and called. “Do you teach your students how to give hearing tests?” she asked. Assured that they did, she forged ahead, “Do the students practice on people who can hear perfectly well?”  It turned out that students practiced only on each other and all of them could hear without difficulty. “Well, I would like to volunteer to come be their guinea pig,” announced Mrs. Huntington, “They need to practice on someone who can’t hear very well; it’s more realistic.”

While she told me the story, Mrs. Huntington’s voice became stronger and I could picture her sitting up straighter. She had been a woman with a mission. For over twenty years, Mrs. Huntington went to the hearing clinic two days a week and helped future audiologists practice on a real live partly-deaf person. “I was hard for them to test and I didn’t make it easy on them, but those kids said they learned more from me than they did by practicing on each other,” she told me. Students remembered her long after; they invited her to their weddings and sent her news of their children and their careers. 

“I like to think I made a difference,” Mrs. Huntington said, “I like to think Mrs. Roosevelt would be proud.”

One of my favorite quotations from Eleanor Roosevelt:

“You gain courage, strength, and confidence every time you are forced to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Next time: Staying alive thanks to Eleanor

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