Deaf ministry pioneer Asbridge dies

From: Dallas Baptist Standard, TX - 14 Mar 2003

Leonard Asbridge, one of five founders of the Southern Baptist Convention for the Deaf, died of heart failure in Jackson, Miss., March 5. He was 96. He was left deaf at the age of 7 after a bout with spiral meningitis. He was a printer, but he also spent nearly 20 years as a Baptist minister to the deaf and a "circuit rider," preaching and establishing new deaf congregations throughout Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. Asbridge and his wife, Doris, who also was hearing impaired, were two of the original five founders of the Southern Baptist Convention for the Deaf in 1948. The idea grew from a need to have something similar to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting but geared toward deaf people.

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