ABSTRACT
My birth certificate tells me I was born on 23 May 1922, at Washington, DC. My parents were listed as Irving and Celia Fusfeld.
My father was born in 1896 in Brooklyn, NY, and was originally named Isadore. He took the name Irving at the time he entered college because Isadore seemed ‘too Jewish’ in the rampant antisemitism of pre-World War I New York. He went on to a distinguished career in education of the deaf at Gallaudet College: Professor, Dean and Vice-President. He was a co-author of A Survey of American Schools for the Deaf (1928), a book that set in motion a large-scale modernization of education of the deaf in this country. He also was editor of the American Annals of the Deaf, the scholarly journal in the field, for over twentyfive years. A building at Gallaudet College was named in his honor a few years ago.
