Miss-Delectable
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MLive.com: Everything Michigan
Silence is Maggie Smedley's friend.
There's a part of her, she says, that relates so closely to deaf children and adults that she could live happily ever after in a non-hearing world, lip reading and speaking with her hands.
Daily, that part of her battles with the reality that Smedley is a 64-year-old woman whose ears work perfectly well.
She's a CODA -- a child of deaf adults. It's a description that has molded her; nudged her toward her life's work of advocating for the deaf, educating them while they, in turn, hand her life lessons.
The job started when she was not yet 3. When her brother, Jerry, was born, it became her job to wake her mother if he cried at night. Five years later, doctors diagnosed Jerry with hearing loss, which became more profound as he grew.
Her dealings with the deaf prompted Smedley, as a teen in Jenison, to declare she'd never become a teacher and never ever be a teacher for the deaf.
"Sometimes you do things to get people off your back, you know?" Smedley says with a grin.
And sometimes it's because the path is so straight and smooth that any other choice would be pure folly.
Communication
Smedley's mother, Gertrude, lost her hearing when she was 3. The cause was never certain. Her father, Herbert, was born deaf, as were others in his family.
"My mother was a good lip reader, but my father was not," Smedley recalls. "He could understand my mother, but no one else."
The kids invented signs. "Ice cream" was licking a make-believe cone in your hand; "turn on the light" was shielding your eyes while pointing at the ceiling, remembers Smedley's brother, Jerry DeVoss.
"We learned signs and how to communicate with Mom and Dad as a matter of reality," says DeVoss, 61, who received a cochlear implant a few years back, which has greatly improved his hearing.
Maggie made friends at the Grand Rapids Deaf Club, where the family spent most Friday nights, and was intrigued with her father's two-handed finger-spelling. Jerry wasn't interested in the deaf world.
"In some respects, she was the goodie-two-shoes, and I was the rebel," says Jerry, who credits Maggie for convincing him to stay in high school. He went on to earn a master's degree and works as health-care coordinator for the state Department of Corrections.
"I think she took on a somewhat parental role in giving advice and trying to lead me in certain directions," Jerry says.
It's typical of an oldest child of deaf parents, his sister says with a shrug. "We bear responsibility at young ages."
And, in Smedley's case, at middle ages, too.
Shortly after she married in 1986, she moved her parents into her new home because they no longer could care for themselves. Her father died the following year, but Gertrude lived under the same roof with her daughter and son-in-law for the next 10 years. She died in 1997 at the age of 94.
At 19, Smedley was learning American Sign Language with her folks and working as a bookkeeper at a gravel pit when the back-to-school bug hit.
"Every September, my gut feeling was, 'You're not supposed to be here.' I started getting a vision of where I should be and where my gifts should be used," she says.
Those dreams didn't involve a calculator or broken stone.
Three years after high school, she enrolled at Reformed Bible Institute in Grand Rapids (now Kuyper College), taking classes in the morning and working afternoons. She transferred to Barrington College in Rhode Island because the college accepted her credits, then graduated with a bachelor's degree in elementary education in 1968.
"I taught third grade in Jenison, and I loved it," she recalls. "I was in heaven with those third-graders."
But her bosses weren't satisfied. School administrators familiar with her background all but demanded she pursue a career teaching deaf children. They nagged her into applying for a one-year fellowship at Columbia University in New York City, where she could earn a master's in deaf education.
Columbia called to say she was in. Smedley declined.
"I made the mistake of telling my school principal. He said 'goodbye.' Before I knew it, I was on my way to Columbia and the year of culture shock," Smedley says.
Not only was the country girl in the city, she was a part of an "oral program." No American Sign Language -- or any other type of hand signals -- allowed.
"I sat on my hands. And I continued to sit on my hands for three months," Smedley remembers. "It was very frustrating to me."
Smedley returned to Michigan in 1982 because her father's health was failing. She loved Redding and had hoped to return, but by 1983 she decided family was more important, sold her house in California and moved back in with her parents.
She took a job teaching deaf adults in the Grand Rapids Public Schools community education program. When funding cuts in 1996 eliminated the program, she went back to teaching children. Until she retired in 1998, she worked with learning-disabled kindergartners and first graders.
"I went from adults with no language to children with language that burned my ears," she says.
An instant family
Maggie was 43 when she met and married Ken Smedley.
His dad was deaf, and had known Maggie's parents for years before Ken and Maggie's introduction.
Maggie figured she had screwed things up when she failed to show for their first date -- she mixed up her Tuesdays -- but Ken wasn't deterred.
"He had a sense of humor that wouldn't quit," she says. "All we did was laugh and giggle. He had so many jokes and riddles. Actually, he was quite a philosopher, although he'd say he was just a dumb country boy."
They walked down the aisle in 1986, on her parents' 50th wedding anniversary. With her "I do," she joined a large and extended family, becoming a step-mom, aunt and grandmother as well as a spouse.
"I was not Ken's first wife. I was No. 5," Smedley says matter-of-factly. "Most people looked at that and said, 'You're nuts.' But it was meant to be. It was a wonderful match. We were married 12 1/2 years."
Ken had seven siblings, seven kids of his own and 10 grandchildren. Maggie remains close to many in the Smedley clan, including Ken's step-mother, Cora MacDonald, who'll turn 90 later this year.
"It took me a long time to memorize which kid went with which family," Maggie says.
After Maggie retired from teaching in June, 1998, she and Ken put the camper top on the pick-up and went on a 57-day excursion to Alaska. They rode a bush plane through the Arctic Circle, saw the Eskimo Indian Olympics and visited author Jack London's cabin in Yukon Territory.
"I have some very good memories," Smedley says. "We drove on these bumpy gravel roads. Agreeable roads, he'd call them, because he could say anything he wanted, and I'd just bob my head."
A few weeks after they returned home, Ken was using his tractor to pull bushes out of his front yard. He and Maggie had decided roses would look nice there.
The tractor flipped, pinning Ken beneath it. Maggie wasn't home. A passer-by saw the accident and summoned help. Ken's son, who lived nearby, rushed to the scene and worked in vain to save his dad.
His autopsy revealed he had a brain tumor, which made sense to Maggie as she thought about it later.
"I remember he couldn't figure out the Canadian exchange rate, and he was always superb with numbers. And he complained of a headache, which was unusual for him.
"It was meant to be," she says. "We still miss him, and we always will. But God just took him, and we have to accept that."
She moved from the Blendon Township farmhouse to a nearby condo about 18 months ago, but just recently sold the property. "It was like saying goodbye to Ken one more time," she says. "It was very hard."
Watching Smedley use American Sign Language to interpret a conversation or church service is a lot like watching a professional storyteller in action.
About 50 percent of her work is facial expression, she says. So she laughs when she's signing a joke. Her lips move to the words, and she nods her head for reinforcement as she signs "yes" or "not difficult."
"When there are two conversations going on at the same time, the interpreter gets to pick one," she says. "That's a problem in board meetings because everybody wants to talk at the same time."
Smedley hasn't been sitting on her hands in the eight years since she retired from public education.
She's "infiltrated" the Grandville Jenison Lions Club, is a member of Quota International of Grand Rapids and since January has been serving as interim director for DEAF, etc., a local agency that provides resources and advocacy for those who are hearing impaired.
"She's tireless," says her friend Sandy Faulkner, who serves on the DEAF, etc. board. When the agency lost its director in 2002, she stepped in as leader for more than a year and refused a salary. This time, she's accepting pay for 25 hours a week but is working at least twice that to see that DEAF, etc., gains a firm and lasting foothold in the community.
"She is the kind of person who never says no, who finds a way to get things up and running," says Cathy Kaiser, president of Quota club, a service group that helps hard-of-hearing and deaf people. "That's her personality style; never say die."
Faulkner admits she was a bit reluctant to appoint her friend as interim director back in 2002. She assumed Smedley didn't know much about being an administrator.
"I was amazed," Faulkner remembers. "I said to her that I had no idea she knew how to do this stuff. She said, 'I didn't. I figured it out as I went along.' "
Smedley's searching for grant money and looking for ways to boost DEAF, etc.'s public profile. But she'll drop everything when a deaf client stops by the Eastown office with a question or concern.
She loves the work.
"Sometimes, I think it's going to give me a heart attack because I get so excited," she says.
Silence is Maggie Smedley's friend.
There's a part of her, she says, that relates so closely to deaf children and adults that she could live happily ever after in a non-hearing world, lip reading and speaking with her hands.
Daily, that part of her battles with the reality that Smedley is a 64-year-old woman whose ears work perfectly well.
She's a CODA -- a child of deaf adults. It's a description that has molded her; nudged her toward her life's work of advocating for the deaf, educating them while they, in turn, hand her life lessons.
The job started when she was not yet 3. When her brother, Jerry, was born, it became her job to wake her mother if he cried at night. Five years later, doctors diagnosed Jerry with hearing loss, which became more profound as he grew.
Her dealings with the deaf prompted Smedley, as a teen in Jenison, to declare she'd never become a teacher and never ever be a teacher for the deaf.
"Sometimes you do things to get people off your back, you know?" Smedley says with a grin.
And sometimes it's because the path is so straight and smooth that any other choice would be pure folly.
Communication
Smedley's mother, Gertrude, lost her hearing when she was 3. The cause was never certain. Her father, Herbert, was born deaf, as were others in his family.
"My mother was a good lip reader, but my father was not," Smedley recalls. "He could understand my mother, but no one else."
The kids invented signs. "Ice cream" was licking a make-believe cone in your hand; "turn on the light" was shielding your eyes while pointing at the ceiling, remembers Smedley's brother, Jerry DeVoss.
"We learned signs and how to communicate with Mom and Dad as a matter of reality," says DeVoss, 61, who received a cochlear implant a few years back, which has greatly improved his hearing.
Maggie made friends at the Grand Rapids Deaf Club, where the family spent most Friday nights, and was intrigued with her father's two-handed finger-spelling. Jerry wasn't interested in the deaf world.
"In some respects, she was the goodie-two-shoes, and I was the rebel," says Jerry, who credits Maggie for convincing him to stay in high school. He went on to earn a master's degree and works as health-care coordinator for the state Department of Corrections.
"I think she took on a somewhat parental role in giving advice and trying to lead me in certain directions," Jerry says.
It's typical of an oldest child of deaf parents, his sister says with a shrug. "We bear responsibility at young ages."
And, in Smedley's case, at middle ages, too.
Shortly after she married in 1986, she moved her parents into her new home because they no longer could care for themselves. Her father died the following year, but Gertrude lived under the same roof with her daughter and son-in-law for the next 10 years. She died in 1997 at the age of 94.
At 19, Smedley was learning American Sign Language with her folks and working as a bookkeeper at a gravel pit when the back-to-school bug hit.
"Every September, my gut feeling was, 'You're not supposed to be here.' I started getting a vision of where I should be and where my gifts should be used," she says.
Those dreams didn't involve a calculator or broken stone.
Three years after high school, she enrolled at Reformed Bible Institute in Grand Rapids (now Kuyper College), taking classes in the morning and working afternoons. She transferred to Barrington College in Rhode Island because the college accepted her credits, then graduated with a bachelor's degree in elementary education in 1968.
"I taught third grade in Jenison, and I loved it," she recalls. "I was in heaven with those third-graders."
But her bosses weren't satisfied. School administrators familiar with her background all but demanded she pursue a career teaching deaf children. They nagged her into applying for a one-year fellowship at Columbia University in New York City, where she could earn a master's in deaf education.
Columbia called to say she was in. Smedley declined.
"I made the mistake of telling my school principal. He said 'goodbye.' Before I knew it, I was on my way to Columbia and the year of culture shock," Smedley says.
Not only was the country girl in the city, she was a part of an "oral program." No American Sign Language -- or any other type of hand signals -- allowed.
"I sat on my hands. And I continued to sit on my hands for three months," Smedley remembers. "It was very frustrating to me."
Smedley returned to Michigan in 1982 because her father's health was failing. She loved Redding and had hoped to return, but by 1983 she decided family was more important, sold her house in California and moved back in with her parents.
She took a job teaching deaf adults in the Grand Rapids Public Schools community education program. When funding cuts in 1996 eliminated the program, she went back to teaching children. Until she retired in 1998, she worked with learning-disabled kindergartners and first graders.
"I went from adults with no language to children with language that burned my ears," she says.
An instant family
Maggie was 43 when she met and married Ken Smedley.
His dad was deaf, and had known Maggie's parents for years before Ken and Maggie's introduction.
Maggie figured she had screwed things up when she failed to show for their first date -- she mixed up her Tuesdays -- but Ken wasn't deterred.
"He had a sense of humor that wouldn't quit," she says. "All we did was laugh and giggle. He had so many jokes and riddles. Actually, he was quite a philosopher, although he'd say he was just a dumb country boy."
They walked down the aisle in 1986, on her parents' 50th wedding anniversary. With her "I do," she joined a large and extended family, becoming a step-mom, aunt and grandmother as well as a spouse.
"I was not Ken's first wife. I was No. 5," Smedley says matter-of-factly. "Most people looked at that and said, 'You're nuts.' But it was meant to be. It was a wonderful match. We were married 12 1/2 years."
Ken had seven siblings, seven kids of his own and 10 grandchildren. Maggie remains close to many in the Smedley clan, including Ken's step-mother, Cora MacDonald, who'll turn 90 later this year.
"It took me a long time to memorize which kid went with which family," Maggie says.
After Maggie retired from teaching in June, 1998, she and Ken put the camper top on the pick-up and went on a 57-day excursion to Alaska. They rode a bush plane through the Arctic Circle, saw the Eskimo Indian Olympics and visited author Jack London's cabin in Yukon Territory.
"I have some very good memories," Smedley says. "We drove on these bumpy gravel roads. Agreeable roads, he'd call them, because he could say anything he wanted, and I'd just bob my head."
A few weeks after they returned home, Ken was using his tractor to pull bushes out of his front yard. He and Maggie had decided roses would look nice there.
The tractor flipped, pinning Ken beneath it. Maggie wasn't home. A passer-by saw the accident and summoned help. Ken's son, who lived nearby, rushed to the scene and worked in vain to save his dad.
His autopsy revealed he had a brain tumor, which made sense to Maggie as she thought about it later.
"I remember he couldn't figure out the Canadian exchange rate, and he was always superb with numbers. And he complained of a headache, which was unusual for him.
"It was meant to be," she says. "We still miss him, and we always will. But God just took him, and we have to accept that."
She moved from the Blendon Township farmhouse to a nearby condo about 18 months ago, but just recently sold the property. "It was like saying goodbye to Ken one more time," she says. "It was very hard."
Watching Smedley use American Sign Language to interpret a conversation or church service is a lot like watching a professional storyteller in action.
About 50 percent of her work is facial expression, she says. So she laughs when she's signing a joke. Her lips move to the words, and she nods her head for reinforcement as she signs "yes" or "not difficult."
"When there are two conversations going on at the same time, the interpreter gets to pick one," she says. "That's a problem in board meetings because everybody wants to talk at the same time."
Smedley hasn't been sitting on her hands in the eight years since she retired from public education.
She's "infiltrated" the Grandville Jenison Lions Club, is a member of Quota International of Grand Rapids and since January has been serving as interim director for DEAF, etc., a local agency that provides resources and advocacy for those who are hearing impaired.
"She's tireless," says her friend Sandy Faulkner, who serves on the DEAF, etc. board. When the agency lost its director in 2002, she stepped in as leader for more than a year and refused a salary. This time, she's accepting pay for 25 hours a week but is working at least twice that to see that DEAF, etc., gains a firm and lasting foothold in the community.
"She is the kind of person who never says no, who finds a way to get things up and running," says Cathy Kaiser, president of Quota club, a service group that helps hard-of-hearing and deaf people. "That's her personality style; never say die."
Faulkner admits she was a bit reluctant to appoint her friend as interim director back in 2002. She assumed Smedley didn't know much about being an administrator.
"I was amazed," Faulkner remembers. "I said to her that I had no idea she knew how to do this stuff. She said, 'I didn't. I figured it out as I went along.' "
Smedley's searching for grant money and looking for ways to boost DEAF, etc.'s public profile. But she'll drop everything when a deaf client stops by the Eastown office with a question or concern.
She loves the work.
"Sometimes, I think it's going to give me a heart attack because I get so excited," she says.