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John Tracy, the deaf son of actor Spencer Tracy who inspired his parents to establish the pioneering John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles to help young hearing-impaired children and their families, has died. He was 82.
Tracy died Friday night at his son's ranch in Acton, where he had lived for the past five years, said his sister, Susie Tracy. The cause of death was not specified.
He was 17 when his mother, Louise Treadwell Tracy, first spoke publicly about rearing a deaf child. The speech at USC led her to found the clinic in a campus bungalow in 1942, and she helped build the nonprofit into a leading institution for deaf education. For the first few years, Spencer Tracy was the clinic's sole support.
"As a child, John Tracy couldn't have known that he would be the inspiration of a whole movement to give new hope to parents of children with hearing loss," Barbara F. Hecht, president of the clinic, told The Times.
The clinic was among the first to start a hearing-impaired child's training in infancy and make parental education a critical component. It has helped an estimated 245,000 parents and children.
It tries to educate "deaf children through their mothers and fathers, who otherwise would not know what to do with them…. I hoped it would help a great deal," John Tracy wrote in 1946 in the Volta Review, the journal of the Alexander Graham Bell Assn. for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
John Tracy, 82; deaf son of actor Spencer Tracy, clinic namesake - Los Angeles Times
Click the link. It's long article. I never knew abt this. It is interested
Tracy died Friday night at his son's ranch in Acton, where he had lived for the past five years, said his sister, Susie Tracy. The cause of death was not specified.
He was 17 when his mother, Louise Treadwell Tracy, first spoke publicly about rearing a deaf child. The speech at USC led her to found the clinic in a campus bungalow in 1942, and she helped build the nonprofit into a leading institution for deaf education. For the first few years, Spencer Tracy was the clinic's sole support.
"As a child, John Tracy couldn't have known that he would be the inspiration of a whole movement to give new hope to parents of children with hearing loss," Barbara F. Hecht, president of the clinic, told The Times.
The clinic was among the first to start a hearing-impaired child's training in infancy and make parental education a critical component. It has helped an estimated 245,000 parents and children.
It tries to educate "deaf children through their mothers and fathers, who otherwise would not know what to do with them…. I hoped it would help a great deal," John Tracy wrote in 1946 in the Volta Review, the journal of the Alexander Graham Bell Assn. for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
John Tracy, 82; deaf son of actor Spencer Tracy, clinic namesake - Los Angeles Times
Click the link. It's long article. I never knew abt this. It is interested
