A sanctuary for the deaf
A 100-year-old deaf club in Minnesota stands out for its resilience and stature.
THE parking lot filled up fast on a recent Saturday outside Charles Thompson Memorial Hall, a majestic brick building that has stood for a century on a bustling corner in St Paul, Minnesota.
Inside, old friends greeted one another with hugs and handshakes. Their hands moved quickly as they used their language – American Sign Language – to share stories about work and family life.
For many in Minnesota’s deaf community, Thompson Hall is a sanctuary. This is especially true on Saturdays, when people come to eat together, play games and attend community meetings.
“Where are your friends?” Peggy Shields, of St Paul, asked rhetorically while playing a card game. “They’re all here in the Deaf Club.”
She has been coming to the club since 1981, when the crowd was bigger and younger.
A hot spot in its heyday, the 100-year-old Thompson Hall remains a vibrant social hub for deaf seniors, but like other deaf clubs across the country, it is struggling to attract younger generations – who increasingly turn to the Internet for their social fix and sense of community.
“There used to be one club in every city,” said Herman Fuechtmann, president of the club’s board of trustees and a long-time club member. “We’re trying to survive.”
And that, in itself, is an accomplishment. The clubhouse recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary with a weekend-long gala. Hundreds of people came back to Thompson Hall – from as far away as Hawaii. At a time when many deaf clubs across the United States have closed, Minnesota’s oldest deaf clubhouse stands out for its resilience and stature.
Fuechtmann grew up coming to the club on weekends with his parents and two sisters. He, his parents and one of his sisters are deaf. His other sister is an American Sign Language interpreter.
“I would help out with the potlucks,” he recalled. It was a place where he could feel comfortable speaking with others through signing, he said.
In the 1980s and 1990s, young families flocked to Thompson Hall, where children raced up and down the winding staircase while their parents met to socialise and plan community events. Membership was free.
“Ooh, it was packed,” Fuechtmann said of those days. “It still is here, but it’s just smaller numbers.”
Built in 1916, it was one of the country’s first deaf clubs. The building was named after Charles Thompson, deaf son of a prominent St Paul banker. Thompson graduated from the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf in Faribault and was a philanthropist who loved to host people in the deaf community at his summer lake home in Alexandria, Minnesota.
Considered the swankiest deaf clubhouse in the world, the building was designed by a famous deaf architect, Olof Hanson.
Deaf culture is a very visual culture, Fuechtmann explained. Outside the auditorium, there are windows in the hallway that allow people walking by the room to peer inside and see what is happening. They can even catch some of the conversation by watching people sign.
Over the years, the building has evolved to meet the changing needs of the deaf community.
In the early years, groups socialised by gender. The hall had a ladies’ parlour upstairs where women gathered. Today, that room is known as the reception room.
For many years, the auditorium used to host movie nights and show old silent movies – popular with many deaf people before close-captioning was available on television and film.
In recognition of its important place in history, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
For the players seated in the dining room for their weekly Mingo game (like bingo, but using playing cards instead of bingo pieces), the club is still the place to be on a Saturday night.
“Ace of spades!” Peggy Shields shouted excitedly, raising one of her cards and showing it to the players at her table for verification. She placed it down and looked up at the “caller” standing at the front of the room, ready to sign what the next card drawn was.
As the next card was called out, another player pumped her fist and cried out: “Mingo!” The caller came over and rewarded Lori Peterson with a pile of cash from the pot. The other players congratulated her, and a new round began.
Back at Shields’ table, Carol Maznio said they enjoy socialising through signing. But they acknowledged that many younger deaf people don’t appear to feel the same pull to the place. The digital age has brought new ways of communicating, and those improvements have made it easier to communicate instantly – and virtually.
Video phones, for example, offer a way to directly call and have an interpreter relaying information with little, if any, delay. Texting and social media channels such as Snapchat and Facebook are also popular communication tools among younger deaf members, Fuechtmann said.
“There’s no need to have face to face communication because they already have that,” he said. – Star Tribune/Tribune News Service