Guest Speaker Rocky Truman

One of the best moments of Staff Orientation’s Day 4 in my opinion was meeting Rocky Truman. Mr. Truman is a man that was born deaf and originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With his special gift his mother never let him feel left out of conversation, so she learned ASL, which is American Sign Language. American Sign language is not a universal thing, so most countries have different movements for words, different accents and things like that.

When Truman was eight or nine, his mother and himself moved to Alabama, and his mother got a job as a dorm parent at the Talladega School for the Deaf which is where Truman attended school. He loved his dorm and the friends he made, learning from all of his peers and instructors. Some of his instructors were hearing, so they used that to conduct speech language classes. Truman learned some words from these classes as well as his family since he was the only person that was deaf. Not long after he left school he came back to work as the football, basketball, track coach as well as the recreational director and other jobs. He loved sports so much that he played American football for two years with a team that was deaf against mostly hearing schools.

Currently he works as a Vocational Rehabilitation Officer for the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services. In this profession Truman helps people who are deaf to get jobs through gaining confidence, interviewing, increasing their resumes, etc. With this job Truman travels with his interpreter Ben, but the audience always speaks and looks at Truman.

One of the staff members asked Mr. Truman what he thinks is one of the biggest misconceptions of deaf people, and he responded, “All deaf people can read lips, and the term hearing impaired is an insult. Most people prefer the term deaf.” People that are deaf feel this way because they don’t feel impaired they are just like anyone else in the world.

We really appreciate Mr. Truman for coming out to share his story with the staff, and we hope he comes back to teach us more sign!