New York School for the Deaf
New York School for the Deaf, also known as Fanwood, is a private nonprofit school for Deaf students in White Plains, New York. Saul Rosen and Miri Rosen graduated in 1962 after meeting there at fourteen.
Overview
The school belongs to the network of Deaf educational institutions that shaped twentieth-century Deaf community, language transmission, and cultural continuity. It was not only an educational setting but also a place where Deaf children and families encountered language, peer community, and cultural belonging.
Saul and Miri Rosen
Saul entered Fanwood as a residential student at approximately five in 1949, after early language deprivation in a hearing adoptive household. At school, he acquired his first full language, ASL, and became fluent in written English. He excelled in shop class and physical comedy; teachers directed some of his persistent classroom mischief into theater productions. After graduating, he entered a New York union printing apprenticeship.
Miri attended Boston’s Horace Mann School for the Deaf before transferring to Fanwood in fall 1958 at fourteen. She arrived with fluent ASL acquired in her Deaf adoptive household. She and Saul met during the 1958–1959 school year. His note asking to walk her to the dining hall began a daily practice they maintained through their remaining school years. The walk later became their private expression of accompaniment during a seventy-nine-year marriage.
Related Entries
- Saul Rosen
- Miriam Rosen
- Saul and Miri Rosen
- ASL and Deaf Culture Reference
- The Whitaker-Rosen Family