The Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind (CSDB) Still Serves its Function to Educate the Hearing and Visually Impaired
The Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind started in the late nineteenth century with a handful of students, 149 years later it continues to serve as a staple in the community. The campus has grown and it now educates hundreds of students through its programs.
From its beginning, the school was welcomed and supported by the community making it what it is today. Since its inception, the school has educated people who have moved on to become famous – including some star athletes.
According to the website, the school now serves over 700 students on its campus and across the state. The campus offers preschool, K-12, and post-high school programs for people who are deaf, blind, or both.
The campus consists of three schools one for the hearing impaired, one for the visually impaired, and one for post-high school learning. The campus has also become known as a place where innovative technologies to aid people with hearing or visual disabilities are implemented.
The School is Built on Donated Land
According to the Colorado Encyclopedia, CSDB was founded as “The Colorado Institute for the Education of Mutes” in 1874 by Jonathan R. Kennedy, who moved to the state from Kansas the year before. Prior to relocating his family to Colorado, Kennedy worked for a school for the hearing impaired in Olathe, Kansas and he had three deaf children of his own.
Once he moved to Denver, he started campaigning for state leaders to get behind him on a plan to establish a school for the hearing impaired in Colorado. He quickly received backing from Territorial Governor Samuel Elbert and various territorial legislators who gave him $5,000.
Once the money was approved, Kennedy began looking for a location to build the campus. After hearing of the plans, Colorado Springs founder William Jackson Palmer offered to donate 10 acres of land east of the downtown region making the growing town south of Denver the school’s new home.
In the first year, the school began operations, a mere seven students (including Kennedy’s three children) were educated in a rented two-story house with four rooms on each floor on the corner of Cucharras and Tejon streets. The building quickly proved to be inadequate, so in 1875, the school moved into the building constructed on the land Palmer donated at the corner of East Pikes Peak Avenue and Institute Street.
In 1883, the school opened up to blind students, which eventually led to its name change to what it is today.
According to the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum’s website, the students learned basic reading, writing, and arithmetic as well as trades like farming, carpentry, broom making, sewing, and printing. For over half a century, the school had its own 200-acre dairy farm where students help take care of pigs, cows, and chickens.
In the school’s handbook from 1893, the enrollment numbers show that even though the campus started off small, it quickly grew from seven students to over 80 in 1892, with a total of 180 students educated in less than 20 years.
CSDB’s Claim to Fame
The school’s website contains three videos on the history of the campus, which talk about the famous figures that attended CSDB. One of the videos tells the story of 1889 graduate Paul Hubbard who went on to play football at the college level.
After playing for a while with his teammates, he figured out that they could understand his sign language. He then decided to call in his teammates close together so that he could sign them without anyone else seeing. Hubbard’s move caught on and eventually made its way to the National Football League making him recognized as the one who invented the huddle.
The school is also famous for being located next door to an experimental lab of inventor Nikola Tesla. And Kennedy’s hearing-impaired daughter, who attended the school, was the mother of movie star Lon Chaney.
One of the School Building Catches on Fire
In one of the videos, Grace Haptonstall, who graduated in 1955, tells the story of the day a fire broke out inside the school’s main building in 1950. The building’s alarms started going off, which prompted the teachers to evacuate the students.
But before the fire grew in size, the school’s principal and two male students ran back inside to save the portraits of famous figures like Palmer and Kennedy. The portraits were rescued before the building completely burnt down.
“What caused the fire was that there were some old electrical wires upstairs, and there were a bunch of braille books that were stored there,” Haptonstall recalls in the video. “When the wire came in contact with the books, it caused the fire.”
After the building was destroyed, the Gottlieb Building was constructed in its place in 1952.
The School Implements Cutting-Edge Technologies
Since its inception, CSDB has become known for using the latest technologies to help students learn. “Engineers solve problems and provide opportunities. In the late 1960s, Vernon Grimes, volunteer at the CSDB helped develop beep ball technology,” the pioneer museum’s curator stated on its website. “This simple yet remarkable device allows visually impaired people to use a sound-emitting ball to play adaptive baseball, football, basketball, soccer, and even juggle. Originally designed by Mountain Bell engineer Charles Fairbanks, Grimes and other Telephone Pioneers of America volunteers improved the prototype by refining the electrical components, and placing the smaller ball inside a 16-inch softball, to keep the ball intact after being hit by a swinging batter.”
In one of the history videos, 2022 graduate Alacia Bates explains an upgrade completed on the building in 2013 that allowed for different lighting schemes for blind students. “Teachers can use software to adjust the brightness and color temperature of individual rows of lights in the classroom,” Bates said in the video. “After they evaluate our lighting needs, based on the eye condition and visual comfort, they program the LED lights. Students with similar lighting needs can sit together. For example, I prefer brighter lights, and students with albinism in my class prefer less intense colored lights. Having the right lighting makes the classroom more comfortable so it’s easier to learn.”
The campus has received numerous remodels to cater to new technologies through the years, but efforts have been made to maintain its historic look. The school still has boarding where students can live on campus. The campus still serves visually and hearing impaired students across all of Colorado and some other states, but most states have some version of a deaf and blind school.
Another article to inspire about Eric Melvin and his deaf cattle dogs.
