Rise & fall of deaf printers at the BJ
As World War II amped up and the military sucked millions of traditional
employees out of the work force, businesses looked elsewhere to keep their
operations going.
Women were enticed into the workplaces like never before. Rosie the
Riveter became commonplace.
And companies looked to those the military did not absorb, including those
labeled 4-F for wartime service.
Firms had been hiring deaf employees decades before Hitler terrorized Europe. But military personnel needs accelerated the shift to women
and those men not snapped up by the service branches.
One group were those who were deaf. Akron rubber shops began hiring
the hearing-impaired. So did the Beacon Journal.
Their names are familiar to those who worked at the BJ:
James Beldon
John Bradley
Eddie Cooper
Dale Efferson
Richard Fair
Mike Goins
Earl Hartman
Emil Hartman
Robert Leland
Paul Midkiff
Ron Sanderlin
Moses Vance
William Weigand
Brian Westlake
Cecil Kolb
Don Reppart
And others that Composing retiree Mike Herchek, former BJ sports editor
Ken Krause and newsroom retiree John Olesky couldn’t think of off the tops of
their heads.
Clubs for the deaf proliferated in America in the 1940s and 1950s. Akron’s
Club for the Deaf -- today at 2307 Sackett Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls – was founded
in 1943. Others sprang up in Cleveland, Warren, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and
Cincinnati.
Clyde Wilson, who died in 2011, was a leader in organizing sports
activities for the deaf: Founded the Tri-State Deaf Softball Association
Tournament in 1940 and the National Deaf Basketball Association Tournament in
1944, was all-star leftfielder for the Akron Silents baseball team in the 1950s
and was secretary-treasurer of the Ohio Deaf Bowling League for 19 years.
The
Firestone retiree wrote the “Akron History of the Deaf” book.
The number of clubs for the deaf has plummeted nationally since, and those that remain – mostly in the Midwest and the South
-- have ever-dwindling memberships. One man reported that, while visiting the
Akron club, he was the youngest person there, at 68!
The Akron club, which bought its own
building, was open 24/7 during World War II, to accommodate deaf workers at
Goodyear Aircraft. Nearly 1,000 deaf men and women worked in Akron defense
industries (the rubber shops converted for wartime purposes).
The International Typographers Union
rapidly added deaf printers to its rolls, including at the BJ. When World War
II ended and the rubber companies went back to peacetime activities and
downsized the number of workers, their deaf employees shifted to print shops
and places like the BJ.
Printing remained a solid occupation till
cold type and computerized production eviscerated composing rooms around the
nation. So women, minorities and the deaf flocked to government jobs.
To read more about the rise and decline of
clubs for the deaf in America, click on http://communication.ucsd.edu/_files/Decline%20of%20Deaf%20Clubs.pdf
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