Music for the Deaf

Everybody likes Sisters Mary Jeanne Madeleine and Mary Francis Terese of the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi. At Milwaukee's Cardinal Stritch College, music students flock to them; and for the children of St. John's School for the Deaf, the day they come to teach is the high point of the week. The sisters (who are twins) can feel the smiles that greet them as they rustle into a room. But they cannot see the smiles, for they are almost totally blind.

They have been almost blind from birth, their eyes so clouded with cataracts that surgery could never completely restore their sight. But the things they have been able to do with their music have more than made up for the things they cannot see.

Before the twins joined the order, their names were Isabelle and Lucille Gay--the daughters of a Faribault, Minn, organist who had lost his own sight as a result of typhoid fever. Their father taught them Braille, sent them off to study the piano. The twins worked hard, and in time, were ready to play in public. Soon they became a familiar sight on Midwestern concert stages.

As duo-pianists, they made one tour after another, sometimes playing by themselves and sometimes with the Montreal Symphony or the Kansas City Philharmonic. But in spite of their success, the twins wanted something more than the concert stage. In 1942 they entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Francis.

Since then they have been so busy that "sometimes," says Sister Jeanne Madeleine, "we feel that three lifetimes wouldn't be enough for all we want to do." To prepare a composition for their music classes, they must first listen to it played on records, then write it out in Braille, and finally learn each section, one hand at a time. After that come hours of practicing together, sandwiched in between the duties and ritual of their order.

At St. John's, they teach the deaf to speak. The children read their lips, and as they do the sisters use the piano to stress the inflection of words--the accent of a syllable, the rhythm of a phrase, the melody of a whole sentence. The children listen with their hands and gradually their rasping monotones begin to break into clear and normal speech.

"Our big dream," says Sister Francis Terese, "is one day to have a school here for the blind. We feel that some time our dream will come true."

-*No connection with the Buckley Schools of Manhattan and Long Island.

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