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Langue des signes, notre racines. Les enfants sourds, notre avenir
Sign languages, our roots. Deaf children, our future
As long as we have deaf people on earth we will have signs, ans as long as we have our films we can preserve our beautiful
sign language in its original purity. It is our hope that we all will love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest
gift God has given to deaf people.
George W. Veditz (1861-1937), 1913
George Veditz was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1861 to German-speaking parents. At the age of eight, he became deaf
and attended the Maryland School for the Deaf (MSD). He passed the entrance exam for Gallaudet College at the age of 17. However,
his parents could not afford to send him to college and so he remained at MSD for a year. During that year he was a part-time
student, foreman of the print shop, and part-time secretary to the superintendent. He entered Gallaudet College in 1880, the
year that the National Association of the Deaf was founded.
Veditz was a gifted student. Not only was he class valedictorian, but he had the highest Grade Point Average (GPA) of
any Gallaudet student in the nineteenth century. After graduating from Gallaudet, he taught at MSD for four years and founded
the Gallaudet Alumni Association and the Maryland Association of the Deaf. After four years he went with his wife back to
her alma mater - The Colorado School for the Deaf. He taught for seventeen years and then became the school's bookkeeper.
Veditz was twice elected President of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD). As president, he objected to the federal
government placing Deaf people in the same classification with criminals. This meant, among other things, that Deaf people
could not work for the federal government. Veditz convinced the government to change its classification.
Veditz also spearheaded the "Preservation of Sign Language" project undertaken by the NAD in 1913. Fearing that
the rapid spread of oralism would destroy or deteriorate sign language, the NAD raised five thousand dollars to produce silent
films of the sign masters of that time. Those films, produced between 1913 and 1920, are the oldest filmed records of sign
language in the world.
Veditz died in 1937 at the age of 76.
http://www.asl.neu.edu/Festival_Website/performers.html
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