One day, young Heather came home from junior high school with an idea. She’d often toss out ideas to her father for what she could be when she grew up. Back then, he was endearingly tough to please, she remembered. Not in an unloving way, but in a way that emboldened Heather to challenge herself.
Her dad was reading in his tattered, gray arm chair. She touched his arm gently and signed, “Dad! What if I become a sign-language interpreter?”
He peered at her over his book, set it down, and signed, “No.”
“What? I thought you’d be excited. I’ve been interpreting for you and mom my whole life,” she pressed. “Why not?”
“Too safe for you,” said Royce. “Believe in yourself. Do what makes you uncomfortable.”
While Heather walked out of the room thinking that it was strange that he wouldn’t want her to choose interpreting as a career, she knew that he was right. So even though she interpreted for then-president Barack Obama during a 2015 national monument dedication in Chicago, she respected his commitment to working hard for the sake of the family. So, she would keep looking for something that challenged her.
*****
After her sophomore year of high school, Heather went to a summer engineering program at Chicago State University. There, she got to dig in to the hardware of all the gadgets that she loved. As she soldered the circuit board for a phone, she thought about how so many people who have hearing loss, at that time, couldn’t use the phone easily—the feedback on hearing aid devices made people on the other end of the line sound like they were in a construction zone. “Wow, I could make accessible technology and really change people’s lives.”
“Today, I never take it for granted that I can send my dad a text if he doesn’t see me standing at the door. The world of pagers and mobile phones really changed our world,” Heather said.
It turns out that there was a name for being an inventor of technology for people who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing. She came home that summer and told her dad, “Engineer. I’m going to be an engineer.” At that point, Heather had never heard of any female, black engineers. Surely that qualified as uncomfortable.
Royce said nothing, his kind eyes narrowing in on hers. He smirked, shrugged, and then walked down the narrow hallway to rest up for the evening’s shift at the post office.