Tenth Generation

197. Elmar DEJACO²⁰¹ was born on 21 Dec 1946 in Brixen/Bressanone, Sudtirol, Italy. From the internet: Living in Silence by Patrick Taschler - Elmar Dejaco is a 60-year-old engineering draftsman who has always dreamt of doing a Doctorate. Nothing should have prevented him from doing so really, except for the fact that he is deaf. And even though we are living in the 21st century, there’s still only one University for the Deaf in Washington DC. And it’s not hard to imagine what it was like during his youth – simply impossible! We talked to him about his family, his dreams and the silence surrounding him.

Q: What does silence mean to you? A: I know what silence means for hearing people: quietness, loneliness, the feeling you get when you’re standing on a mountain summit. For me though, it doesn’t mean anything because in my life there’s neither silence nor noise.... Q: Were there obstacles in your life that you found very difficult to overcome? A: When I was six, my parents sent me to a special school for the deaf in Mils/Hall in Tyrol because there were no such institutions or speech therapists in southern Tyrol back then who would have facilitated the integration of deaf children. After that, I trained as a carpenter at the technical college for the deaf in Munich and easily passed my trade test. Back in the southern Tyrolean town of Brixen I tried to work at two carpentries but it was difficult. For my parents it wasn’t enough either and so I moved to Heidelberg in Germany to attend a normal school for technical draftsmen, which worked really well. There are not so many obstacles in my job since I created an ideal environment for myself. I leave client appointments to my colleagues and communicate via email or text messages. One of the biggest obstacles was raising my two daughters. Not only because they were “little rascals” but because we couldn’t teach them how to talk. Back then we were lucky to live in a house with many other children and my family lived close by so that my daughters always had many people to talk to.... Q: What would you say is the main difference between your life and the life of a hearing person? A: That they can hear everything! (smiles).

Christa PERATHONER along with the other wives hosted a dinner for their American visitors at their home in Brixen in Jul 2004.

Elmar DEJACO and Christa PERATHONER had the following children:

+306	i.	Beate DEJACO.
307	ii.	Birgit DEJACO was born on 13 Aug 1979.