MARINE CORPS LOGISTICS BASE BARSTOW, Calif. -- They can be seen at special functions aboard Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, facing away from the main speaker to gesture and draw in the air, using their faces or entire bodies to convey a message to a small group of people who stare intently at them. They are Sign language experts providing interpreting services for Deaf employees.
PULA Legal Interpreting has the contract to provide American Sign Language interpreters for Deaf and hard of hearing employees aboard MCLB Barstow, explained Bonnie Gibson-Brydon, the founder and owner of the company based in Redondo Beach, Calif.
“I worked with the Afrikaans School for the Deaf and the State School for the Deaf (in South Africa). At the State School, which is the school for the black students,” she said. “They called my work ‘Pula’, which means ‘the rain that blesses.’”
PULA was established in 1996 by Gibson-Brydon six years after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law in 1990. The ADA and other federal laws require government and private agencies to make reasonable accommodations for employees with physical disabilities.
By the way, Gibson-Brydon explained, it is OK to call Deaf people Deaf (with a capital ‘D’).
“In our politically correct world, people who are not Deaf say ‘hearing impaired’. But those who are Deaf say ‘no, that’s not correct. I’m not impaired, I’m Deaf.’
“We don’t have ‘translators’, we have ‘interpreters’ because Sign language is a conceptual way of communicating and one Signer could do things differently than another Signer in order to get the same message across,” Gibson-Brydon said.
“Sometimes when a meeting is going to go for a long time we have to provide two interpreters. They have to work as a team to handle the interpreting needs,” the native of Ft. Hood, Texas, said.
At the June 23 Maintenance Center Barstow change of command ceremony, for example, both Susan A. Randolph and Linda A. Hardy provided interpretations of remarks for approximately a dozen Deaf employees.
Randolph, a veteran Signer who has been working for PULA for six years, had an enthusiastic response when asked why she does what she does, considering how much time it takes to learn American Sign Language.
“I totally love what I do,” the Lynwood, Calif., native said.
According to Randolph, one of the reasons she loves her work is that Sign language bridges cultural gaps.
“If Signers went to another country and spoke with Deaf people there they could more easily communicate with someone of a different language because the signs are conceptually derived rather than based on a spoken language such as Spanish, English or French,” she said.
To give an idea of how difficult Sign language can be, Randolph said, one hand shape can be interpreted many different ways.
“For example there is a hand shape done for the word ‘mother’ or it could also be ‘momma or mom’.”
Gibson-Brydon insists you have to love Signing to do it for a living.
“I have an absolute passion for Signing,” she said.
“I just got back from a national conference and we had to work very hard and there’s no way we’d do what we do if it wasn’t a passion.”
Hardy has a 30-year history of providing Signing services at MCB and is the interpreter most requested by Deaf and partially deaf employees, according to Gibson-Brydon.
Sign language caught Hardy’s attention when she was 13.
“One of the families down the block was deaf,” Hardy said.
“One of the daughters and the parents were deaf and I would babysit for her. I watched the movie (The Miracle Worker) about the life of Helen Keller at their house and I thought ‘Oh boy, that’s it. That’s what I want to do.’
“There were only two books out on Sign language back then and I couldn’t find them so I learned by copying signs from the Deaf family,” the Washington, D.C., native explained.
That knowledge was to prove even more valuable than she realized at the time. When Hardy married and had children of her own, life took an unexpected twist.
“Our three children are Deaf and one of our granddaughters is Deaf. I already knew how to Sign and had been Signing since I was a young teenager,” Hardy said.
Hardy and Randolph agree just as many people know a few words of a foreign language, learning a few phrases of Sign language can broaden a person’s knowledge.
“Learning how to sign ‘Hi, how are you?’ just brightens a Deaf person’s day or learning ‘Where does it hurt’ if you work in a hospital,” Randolph said.
“The hearing person, the Deaf person and the interpreter work in partnership. There’s nobody subservient to anybody and it creates an “aha!” moment when the partnership is successful and you successfully interpret for someone,” Hardy said.