| History of the Lehigh Association of the Deaf The Lehigh Association of the Deaf is the second oldest deaf association in Pennsylvania today. Many years ago it had been the practice of a small group of deaf people to meet each other in the old pool room on Hamilton Street between Seventh and Eight Streets in Allentown, PA, where they brought bags of peanuts to eat while they communicated with each other. This resulted in piles of peanuts shells on the pool room floor and the proprietor called the police which put a stop to their meetings in the old poolroom. From there they went down the street to the old YMCA building which was located on the square of which our official emblem is designed. The meetings of this location took place regularly on Friday evenings. One evening they got into a discussion about the problems of the deaf being pushed around and having no place to go on Saturday evenings. In these days there was an occasional social for the deaf at a Church, but it usually closed at an early hour and the evening remained long. They would hang around a corner under the street lamppost, talked the night away. On March 28, 1925. The first minute began with: “The boys (14 in all) do hereby favor of having a club. The 14 deaf boys agreed to pay $1.00 to join and agreed to pay 25 cents a week due. They voted to name the club – “Silent Men’s Club”, which was changed in next month’s meeting – to call their club the “Allentown Silent Club.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dedicated to these 14 men who favored to have a club Without these men, Lehigh Association of the Deaf would have not existed. William Bahl Lewis Kleibscheidel Harold Berger Harrison Litzenberger Mark Dreisbach Stewart McCormick Albert Dries Howard Newhard Thomas J. Eroh Ernest Sechler Samuel Frickert R.B VanEtten Charles J. Handwerk Frederick Wolfe |
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| History |