About John F. Egbert

Professional Career

John F. Egbert was born with profound hearing loss in Jackson, Mississippi to hearing parents. Both parents were told not to teach or learn sign language and sent John to an oral only method school in New Orleans.
John developed speaking skills and quickly became a valuable student, used as a model to prove the success of the listening and speaking ideology. He was shown around New Orleans as a means for soliciting donations for the school.
His parents took him out of the oral school after the third grade and John started attending public schools without any interpreters or special classes. He grew up entirely in the hearing culture and never knew sign language or fingerspelling until he attended to Gallaudet College (now University)  in 1966 and discovered Deaf culture and its language, American Sign Language. He was 19 at the time.
With his realization of the importance having the Deaf babies and children in schools to be bilingual: American Sign Language and English, he founded the Deaf Bilingual Coalition to help and educate newly parents of Deaf babies to learn American Sign Language and English. Thousands of hearing babies currently learn sign language as their first language before their vocal cords become developed at 18-24 months, so John believes that all Deaf children should also be exposed to sign language from the very beginning.
John has spoken to many organizations and worked tirelessly on other related causes to promote bilingualism for all Deaf babies from the very start of their lives.

Personal Biography

John currently resides in Minnesota with his Deaf wife, Shirley(Frelich) and raised two Deaf children, Clyde and Stella. They are now the proud grandparents of four Deaf grandchildren.  John’s son Clyde is a Mac OSX computer/system technician at the Texas School for the Deaf and his daughter Stella is an elementary principal at the Texas School for the Deaf. Both of my children were raised bilingually.