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| 1997 What the Deaf Man Heard |
When my father finally admitted that he needed a hearing
aid, we sighed with relief. Decades of handling farm equipment had damaged his
hearing as it had to all the other farmers his age. We tired of repeating and dealing with his
frustration, and I am guessing other families did as well.
We made some assumptions just how much he could hear with
his new hearing aids. They weren’t 100% and has a tired old acronym: to
assume makes an ass of you and me.
That is what we did, thinking we could talk in the kitchen
and he would not hear what we said from the living room. We discovered this early
on, which was fortunate.
In a 1997 Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, What the Deaf Man
Heard**, Sammy (played by Matthew Modine) is left on a bus when his mother is
murdered. She had always and repeatedly warned him to “keep quiet”, which Sammy
took to the extreme. The bus station manager and wife informally adopt him, believing him to be deaf and mute.
As Sammy feigns being deaf and mute, the small community
grows to accept it and he becomes invisible to them. He shows talent as a gardener, leading him to be involved in the lives of the elite. Over 20 years, Sammy uses
this as a shield and learns a heck of a lot of secrets.
Therein lies the whole purpose of this blog:
What would you
do? Could you be like
Sammy for 20 years? Could you be invisible? Do you know people who fit in this category?
**Cast: Matthew Modine, Claire Bloom, Judith Ivey, James Earl Jones, Tom Skerritt, Frankie Muniz, Bernadette Peters
The above YouTube clip is about the making of the movie. It is 10 minutes long, but shows much about the challenges of the south in post WW2, discrimination, treatment of people with disabilities, class structures, etc.
Worth watching in parts
