CID CELEBRATES 90th BIRTHDAY
WITH CHILDREN’S WAX MUSEUM

ST. LOUIS, May 4, 2004—On Friday, April 30, staff and students at Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) in St. Louis, Missouri, gathered for a Founder’s Day birthday celebrating 90 years since CID was started by St. Louis physician, Max Aaron Goldstein, MD to teach deaf children to talk and to train their teachers.

The CID students enacted a 1900s Wax Museum featuring Dr. Goldstein and some of his fellow historical figures from the 20th century. The children continued the CID Founder’s Day tradition: offering "gifts of speech" in Dr. Goldstein’s memory.

CID school principal JoEllen Epstein, MAEd, CED was the tour guide for the Wax Museum, featuring historical facts spoken by the costumed children, before an audience of other CID students, family members, teachers, staff and guests. Dr. Goldstein’s grandson, Norman C Wolff, Jr., and great granddaughter, Laurie Miller, also spoke. Wolff and Miller are members of the Central Institute for the Deaf board of managers.

The children impersonated Dr. Goldstein and some of his 20th century contemporaries from science, medicine and the arts, including G.W. Carver, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Louis Armstrong, Isadora Duncan, Alexander Graham Bell, Helen Keller, Ann Sullivan, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Clara Barton and Georgia O'Keefe.

Dr. Goldstein was a prominent figure in St. Louis from when he founded CID in 1914 until his death in 1941. Under his direction and with support from the medical and business communities, CID became famous for helping deaf children learn to talk and became the place where the science of audiology was developed along with educational practices used throughout the world to help deaf children learn speech and language.

Later contributions of CID scientists include the auditory brainstem response technique still used widely in hospitals for testing hearing impairment in infants. In the 1990s, working in collaboration with Washington University scientists, CID scientists laid groundwork for the digital hearing aid. CID educational researchers have developed tests and curricula used to help deaf children throughout the world.

In the past decade, CID has garnered international attention with landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies of the role of cochlear implants in the oral education of deaf children as well as with millions of dollars in NIH-funded research in the biology of hearing and deafness. In the late 1990s, CID led a successful $32 million capital campaign to build new facilities, including a state-of-the-art oral school for deaf children and biological research laboratories.

In September of 2003, CID reached an historic agreement with Washington University School of Medicine, which assumed ownership of real estate and governance of a portion of CID's programs, including its deafness research, adult clinical care and advanced degree programs in deaf education and audiology. Most of the newly named CID at Washington University School of Medicine programs are being operated under the auspices of the department of otolaryngology and continue to advance CID’s mission to help deaf and hearing-impaired children and adults.  

In close but financially independent association with CID at Washington University School of Medicine, CID continues to serve deaf and hearing-impaired children birth-12, teaching them to listen, talk and read with proficiency without the use of sign language.  

CID also provides family counseling and education at its Joanne Parrish Knight Family Center, mainstream transition services for deaf students, consulting for mainstream schools, continuing education deaf education workshops, collaborative research in childhood deafness, and develops educational tools used to help deaf children. CID teachers and pediatric audiologists serve as faculty for the CID at Washington University School of Medicine graduate degree programs and CID classrooms serve as practicum sites for the deaf education graduate degree program.

Dr. Max Goldstein was a scientist and a scholar who cared deeply about giving deaf children and adults unprecedented opportunities to learn to listen, speak and succeed in the mainstream. CID became the embodiment of his commitment to the concept of creating a place where teachers, parents and doctors would work together to help educate deaf and hearing-impaired children. Today, CID and CID at Washington University School of Medicine continue his legacy, serving people with hearing loss so they can communicate effectively and live to their fullest potential.