Thomas Willard

I started to lose my hearing when I was 8 and I was deaf by high school. I got by okay by sitting up front and trying to lipread the teacher and by doing the work and studying for the tests. Who needs to hear what the teachers are saying, right?

I went on to Syracuse (one semester) and Rutgers (two years) but I couldn't get by anymore. I dropped out and got a job at a photo lab.

Then I looked into the Rochester Institute of Technology, which is home to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. I enrolled in 1980 at age 22 and learned ASL and got a BS in photography with interpreters in my classes.

I founded a national nonprofit called Deaf Artists of America in 1985 and ran it for 10 years. We had an art gallery in Rochester NY. I was also editor of two national newspapers for the deaf community, and 10 other publications over a 38-year period.

In 2016, I started doing standup in the "hearing world," trying to represent deaf people in the mainstream. I was going to open mics several times a week to do my own act but never able to hear what the others comics were saying. I gave it six years but I'm not trying to go anywhere in comedy anymore.

I live with four cats in a 149-year-old house in Rochester and enjoy puttering around with the garden. Recently I started going to the batting cage again after a 40-year gap of swinging at balls. It's been a lot of fun.

To get by as a deaf kid in a hearing high school, you need to either be good at sports or good-looking. I didn't have those things going for me, but I found a third way -- I became a photographer. My dad built a darkroom in the basement and I was a human Polaroid, taking pictures after school and bringing in the prints the next morning. I ended up with photos in the Hi's Eye and the Westfield Leader almost every week.

I also started my own business taking group pictures of baseball and softball leagues. I was riding my bike to sports fields all around town until I got my driver's license and bought a car for $950 with money from the team pictures.

In Spring 1974, I learned that my Hi's Eye colleague Andrew Karp was going to be in Washington DC over spring break to interview four WHS alumni working government jobs, including one at the White House. I asked to tag along as photographer. (I was visiting my brother in DC anyway.) Thus I managed to get in the West Wing twice (we got rescheduled) and sneak a peak at the Oval Office. (Nixon had just stepped out.) Sadly, Andrew passed in 2016. Several friends started a scholarship in his name with the Westfield Foundation.

Oh, and I have to mention Walt Clarkson, advisor for the Hi's Eye. He had a strong effect on my life that continues to this day.

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