Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-01-20
GALLAUDET TO GET
FUND FOR BUILDING
Presentation of $4,000 for
Memorial Library to Be
Held February 5.

The Alumni Association of Gallaudet
College will, on February S, present a
fund of $4,000 to DR.. Percival Hall,
president of the institution, for erec-
ton of building on Kendall Green, as
a memorial to DR.. Edward Miner Gal
laudet, founder and president of the
college for 46 years.
The association began its campaign
for the Gallaudet Memorial fund on
February 5, 1907, the SEVENTEEN ami
versary of the founding. 1t encoun-
tered many obstacles. Ten years later
only S2,00353 had been raised. On
July l, of that year, the association ap-
pointed a committee to stimulate the
drive. Last May total of $35, 900 had
been raised.
Remaining $4,000 Obtained.
Today DR.. Hall disclosed that he
had been notified that the remaining
SIS. 900 had been obtained.
The fund will be presented to DR..
Hall, who has been president OF the
college since 1910. in the chapel OF
the institution. The man whose name
the fund bears will be the subject OF
an address by Dr. Thomas Francis Cox,
principal of the New York Institution
Ways and Means Committee. Local
members of this committee are: Roy
j. Stewart of the Census Bureau and
Prof. Frederick H. Hughes and Prof.
Harley ID. Drake, both of the Gallau-
Diet faculty.
Miss May Koehn, student from
Kansas, will recite a poem in the sign
language, with Miss Ellzapeth Peet, an
other member of the faculty, recitlng 1t
orally. DR.. Hall then will confer an
honorary degree upon DR.. Knight Dun
lap of Johns Hopkins University, Bal
timore, Md, in recognition OF his two
years work as chairman of the Ma
tionaI Research Councils committee On
problems of the deaf Besides the in
vocation and benediction-which Will
be given by Rev. Francis G. Smielau
and Rev. Herbert Gallaudet, son of the
founder of the college-the program also
includes an address by Secretary Will
bur of the Interior Department.
The fund represents only a traction
of the cost of erecting the proposed
structural combination library and
recitation building-which, according
to DR.. Hall, will involve an expenditure
of approximately 100000.
Lincoln Approved Project.
DR.. Gallaudet was the son of Thomas
Hopkins Gallaudet, who went TO Eng
land in 1915 to learn the methods used
to educate Handicapped children in that
country. England had made but little
progress along that line, however, SO ne
turned to a study of the methods then
in use in France. With the assistance
of Laurent Clerc, a teacher at Paris
school, he later founded in Hartford,
Conn.,, the first free school for the deaf
in this country.
And it was his son who, at the be-
hest of Amos Kendall, then one OF
Washington's NEST prominent citizens,
established the first such institution
in the District of Columbia.
In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln
affixed his signature to law granting
the Columbia Institution for the Deaf,
as the organization of which Gallaudet
College is a part, is legally known, the
power to confer collegiate degrees. The
college proper came into being the fol-
lowing Fail, when DR.. Gallaudet in
augurated a department for advanced
study. Altogether, the institution has
been attended by nearly 1000 deaf per-
sons from all of this country's various
States and Territories, as well as from
many foreign countries.
Three Departments Maintained.
At present. the institution is divided
into three partments-Kendall School,
which carries deaf children from the
first grade through high school: Gal
laudet College and the normal depart
ment, where they may qualify them
selves as teachers of the deaf.
Graduates of the institution may be
found in such professions as architec-
ture, banking, chemistry. dentistry, law.
scientific agriculture, teaching, ministry
to the deaf and the fine arts. Several
hundred graduates now are engaged in
the instruction of deaf children in va
rious State schools in all parts of the
country, and 20 graduates of the nor
nal department have become executive
heads of such institutions. More than
a score have been ordained ministers
and are doing missionary work among
the deaf.