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Caring for deaf mother gave him resolve to make team | High School Sports | projo.com | The Providence Journal
There will be a package under the tree on Christmas morning with a tag reading To Mom, From Justin.
But Justin Smith’s most important gift to his mother doesn’t come with a bright paper and fancy bow.
You can’t wrap a 17-year-old’s nearly life-long commitment to making his mother’s life easier in a world she can’t clearly speak to.
You can’t put a bow on the pride a woman who has never heard her son’s voice felt this fall when she watched him accomplish things on a football field that no one ever thought he would.
Susan Sandbach was born deaf in the late 1950s, one of two premature twins.
A Cranston native, she went to the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Mass., for her early education, but she returned to Cranston for her high school days, in the mid-1970s.
It was a time when it wasn’t easy for deaf teenager to receive a mainstream education in high school. There wasn’t the awareness; the mechanical or human assistance available in today’s public education system. But she was a woman of determination.
She graduated from Cranston East in 1975 and went to college at Rochester Institute of Technology. After graduation, she went to Washington, D.C., where she worked for a law firm as a translator for the deaf. She married a deaf man and gave birth to two sons. Neither Justin nor his older brother had any hearing problems.
The family moved to Rhode Island when Justin was two, but five years later his parents divorced. But even before the divorce, even before he was in elementary school, Smith had become his mother’s conduit to the hearing world.
He learned at an early age that the hearing world often doesn’t have patience with the hearing- and speech-impaired, so for most of his life he has tried to make it easier for his mother.
“I do a lot of stuff with her,” said Smith, now a Cranston East senior. “Like when she wants to go to the bank and open a new bank account. She doesn’t want to have sit there and write back-and-forth, so I go with her. She knows what’s going on. She can tell what people are saying and she’s speaking, but there’s a communication problem. People are looking at her and are like — what are you saying? When I see she gets frustrated in communication, I try to step in.”
There was always help from other family members, but more and more as he grew older, it was Justin who became his mother’s communication assistant.
“I’ve been doing it since before I can remember,” said Smith, who has submitted college applications to URI and UMass-Dartmouth. “Some young kids might be embarrassed because people might think you’re different if they see you signing. Young kids don’t want to be different; they want to be like all their friends. But it never bothered me; it’s something I just do for my mother. I do it as much as I can.”
He had grown up in a non-hearing household where his only verbal communication was with his brother, who was only a few years older than him.
So he learned to communicate in two forms. His mother taught him sign language, and Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Cookie Monster taught him the spoken word.
“When I was young and I pointed to something I wanted, like milk, my mother would teach me the sign for it,” said Smith. “But I learned sentence structure and things like that from watching all the PBS shows on TV.”
His mother made sure he was exposed to the spoken word at every opportunity, so the trips to the public library’s children’s reading hours began when he was about 3 and he was in preschool by the time he was 4.
He was small for his age, but he loved playing sports with his neighborhood friends, especially football. He just didn’t come from a family that understood the organized youth-sports system.
“I always wanted to play sports and I played pickup games with all my friends, but I didn’t know how to get into Pop Warner or any of that stuff,” said Smith. “That wasn’t part of my mother’s world.”
But when he was in the eighth grade, he learned he could sign up to play freshman football the following year at Cranston East, so he asked his mother if he could play.
His mother knew nothing about football; she had never been to a game and she didn’t watch sports on TV. She did, however, have a memory of what can happen on a football field.
When she was a student at Cranston East, her friend Kelly Fiske was paralyzed from an injury he suffered in a football game.
Now her son was asking whether he could play on the same field were her friend had been paralyzed in a game she didn’t understood.
But Sandbach always wanted her children to take on challenges, never wanted them to shy away just because she didn’t understand.
“She was surprised when I told her I wanted to play, but she encouraged me,” said Smith about his introduction to organized football.
“I told him to go for it,” Sandbach, who assumed her maiden name after her divorce, said through signs to Justin.
At freshman football weight-ins four years ago, Smith measured 5-foot-2 and weighed 87 pounds.
“He was a great kid, but I never thought he would play a down of varsity football game,” Cranston East coach Tom Centore said.
He did grow three or four inches and put on some weight during his sophomore and junior years, but he didn’t play in a single varsity game.
But his mother had given him a gift. That same determined spirit she had showed 35 years earlier in her quest to receive a mainstream education at Cranston East, her son used to earn playing time for East .
“When the season ended last year, I said to myself I don’t want to sit on the bench my senior year,” Smith said. “I said I’m going to do everything I can to play. I didn’t want to be saying, if I had done this, I may have been playing. I wanted to do everything I could do. So I lifted weights every single day Monday through Friday.”
“It was incredible how hard he worked in the offseason,” Centore said.
His workout regimen corresponded with a another growth spurt, so by the time practice started last summer, Smith was 5-10 and 150 pounds. Not only did he earn a berth as a starting defensive back, but he was on the field for every East defensive play in all 11 games.
“He never came off the field on defense and I don’t think he missed a single assignment all season,” Centore said. “He was the one who kept things under control; the one who calmed everybody down out there.”
And watching with pride from the stands at every game was his mother.
“She said she’s very proud of me,” Smith said translating a sign from his mother.
“He has a big heart,” Sandbach signed about her son. “He’s my gift.”
There will be a package under the tree on Christmas morning with a tag reading To Mom, From Justin.
But Justin Smith’s most important gift to his mother doesn’t come with a bright paper and fancy bow.
You can’t wrap a 17-year-old’s nearly life-long commitment to making his mother’s life easier in a world she can’t clearly speak to.
You can’t put a bow on the pride a woman who has never heard her son’s voice felt this fall when she watched him accomplish things on a football field that no one ever thought he would.
Susan Sandbach was born deaf in the late 1950s, one of two premature twins.
A Cranston native, she went to the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Mass., for her early education, but she returned to Cranston for her high school days, in the mid-1970s.
It was a time when it wasn’t easy for deaf teenager to receive a mainstream education in high school. There wasn’t the awareness; the mechanical or human assistance available in today’s public education system. But she was a woman of determination.
She graduated from Cranston East in 1975 and went to college at Rochester Institute of Technology. After graduation, she went to Washington, D.C., where she worked for a law firm as a translator for the deaf. She married a deaf man and gave birth to two sons. Neither Justin nor his older brother had any hearing problems.
The family moved to Rhode Island when Justin was two, but five years later his parents divorced. But even before the divorce, even before he was in elementary school, Smith had become his mother’s conduit to the hearing world.
He learned at an early age that the hearing world often doesn’t have patience with the hearing- and speech-impaired, so for most of his life he has tried to make it easier for his mother.
“I do a lot of stuff with her,” said Smith, now a Cranston East senior. “Like when she wants to go to the bank and open a new bank account. She doesn’t want to have sit there and write back-and-forth, so I go with her. She knows what’s going on. She can tell what people are saying and she’s speaking, but there’s a communication problem. People are looking at her and are like — what are you saying? When I see she gets frustrated in communication, I try to step in.”
There was always help from other family members, but more and more as he grew older, it was Justin who became his mother’s communication assistant.
“I’ve been doing it since before I can remember,” said Smith, who has submitted college applications to URI and UMass-Dartmouth. “Some young kids might be embarrassed because people might think you’re different if they see you signing. Young kids don’t want to be different; they want to be like all their friends. But it never bothered me; it’s something I just do for my mother. I do it as much as I can.”
He had grown up in a non-hearing household where his only verbal communication was with his brother, who was only a few years older than him.
So he learned to communicate in two forms. His mother taught him sign language, and Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Cookie Monster taught him the spoken word.
“When I was young and I pointed to something I wanted, like milk, my mother would teach me the sign for it,” said Smith. “But I learned sentence structure and things like that from watching all the PBS shows on TV.”
His mother made sure he was exposed to the spoken word at every opportunity, so the trips to the public library’s children’s reading hours began when he was about 3 and he was in preschool by the time he was 4.
He was small for his age, but he loved playing sports with his neighborhood friends, especially football. He just didn’t come from a family that understood the organized youth-sports system.
“I always wanted to play sports and I played pickup games with all my friends, but I didn’t know how to get into Pop Warner or any of that stuff,” said Smith. “That wasn’t part of my mother’s world.”
But when he was in the eighth grade, he learned he could sign up to play freshman football the following year at Cranston East, so he asked his mother if he could play.
His mother knew nothing about football; she had never been to a game and she didn’t watch sports on TV. She did, however, have a memory of what can happen on a football field.
When she was a student at Cranston East, her friend Kelly Fiske was paralyzed from an injury he suffered in a football game.
Now her son was asking whether he could play on the same field were her friend had been paralyzed in a game she didn’t understood.
But Sandbach always wanted her children to take on challenges, never wanted them to shy away just because she didn’t understand.
“She was surprised when I told her I wanted to play, but she encouraged me,” said Smith about his introduction to organized football.
“I told him to go for it,” Sandbach, who assumed her maiden name after her divorce, said through signs to Justin.
At freshman football weight-ins four years ago, Smith measured 5-foot-2 and weighed 87 pounds.
“He was a great kid, but I never thought he would play a down of varsity football game,” Cranston East coach Tom Centore said.
He did grow three or four inches and put on some weight during his sophomore and junior years, but he didn’t play in a single varsity game.
But his mother had given him a gift. That same determined spirit she had showed 35 years earlier in her quest to receive a mainstream education at Cranston East, her son used to earn playing time for East .
“When the season ended last year, I said to myself I don’t want to sit on the bench my senior year,” Smith said. “I said I’m going to do everything I can to play. I didn’t want to be saying, if I had done this, I may have been playing. I wanted to do everything I could do. So I lifted weights every single day Monday through Friday.”
“It was incredible how hard he worked in the offseason,” Centore said.
His workout regimen corresponded with a another growth spurt, so by the time practice started last summer, Smith was 5-10 and 150 pounds. Not only did he earn a berth as a starting defensive back, but he was on the field for every East defensive play in all 11 games.
“He never came off the field on defense and I don’t think he missed a single assignment all season,” Centore said. “He was the one who kept things under control; the one who calmed everybody down out there.”
And watching with pride from the stands at every game was his mother.
“She said she’s very proud of me,” Smith said translating a sign from his mother.
“He has a big heart,” Sandbach signed about her son. “He’s my gift.”