ISD continues celebrating 150 years of service

From: Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil - Council Bluffs,IA,USA - Jan 21, 2005

PHIL ROONEY, Staff Writer
01/21/2005

Iowa School for the Deaf continues its year-long 150th anniversary celebration with a Monday luncheon marking the day the Iowa Legislature passed the law that formed the Iowa School for the Deaf.

A campus lunch for students and staff will include a program by Ronald Sutcliffe on the school's beginning. The ISD graduate is writing a book on the school's history to be published later this year.

Monday's events are the latest in a series that began with a non-class education day in October when students took part in a museum scavenger hunt, spelling bees and historical lessons on what it was like in the past to attend ISD.

A simulated one-room school house provided a chance for students in the lower elementary grades to dress in pioneer clothing, bake cornbread and write on slates.

The school's bookstore is offering special sesquicentennial items including a 4-inch round handpainted replica of the ISD administration building, a full-color woven blanket featuring eight campus buildings and a print by nationally known artist P. Buckley Moss of Virginia.

Moss, who has previously created works for the Terrace Hill Mansion in Des Moines and the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton, is a Virginia-based artist who will also sell the prints at her galleries around the nation.

One highlight of the celebration comes May 26 when the president of Gallaudet University, I. King Jordan, will be keynote speaker for a banquet at the Mid-America Center. The following day he will give the graduation address to the class of 2005.

Gallaudet, in Washington, D.C., is the world's only university for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Sesquicentennial festivities will conclude during the fall homecoming. Those plans have not been finalized.

A special section on ISD's 150 years of serving Iowa's deaf and hard-of-hearing students will appear in Sunday's edition of The Daily Nonpareil.

The section will cover events that shaped the school's history, information on current programming and the referral process, plus a historical timeline.

©Daily Nonpareil 2005