Passings

I was saddened to hear recently of the deaths of two acquaintances of mine.

Shearlean Duke was the chair of the Journalism department at WWU. I met Shearlean last fall because a mutual friend knew that we were both dealing with terminal cancer - brain cancer in her case. Although I didn't get to know her well, the brief time we spent together was meaningful to me. She was a warm and kind person. There will be a celebration of her life this Sunday from noon to 4 pm at the Squalicum Boathouse in Zuanich Park.

Cyril Courtin did research on cognitive development in deaf children, like myself. I only met him in person once, at the TISLR (Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research) conference in 1998 at Gallaudet University in Washington DC. Cyril was French, deaf, and had some health issues that I didn't fully understand but which made his movements a little spastic. Nevertheless, we managed to communicate - he using French Sign Language (LSF) and me using American Sign Language (ASL). Side note: ASL evolved from LSF after Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc brought LSF to the US in the early 1800s, so ASL and LSF are related whereas ASL and British Sign Language (BSL) are not, although the same spoken language, with minor variations, is used in the US and UK.

Cyril was an interesting, intelligent, and nice guy. We kept in touch via email and kept tabs on each other's research. I sometimes joked that it was only through the miracle of the Internet that I could be friends with a deaf guy in France with whom I did not share a language (although actually Cyril's written English was understandable - more so than my written French). I learned of Cyril's death yesterday from another researcher in our field, who asked me if I would like to contribute something for a conference to celebrate Cyril's life and work in Paris in December (I said that I could not commit to contributing something, given my own health issues). Apparently Cyril went to bed Christmas Eve and did not get up on Christmas morning. As I mentioned, he had some health issues and I knew that he was not expected to live as long as he did (he was around my age).

Ethan