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George was born hearing to German immigrants in Baltimore, Maryland.
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He attended the Zion School in Baltimore - it was a bilingual school - George was known to be able to speak English and German fluently as well as several other languages.
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He became deaf by the age of 8 after getting Scarlet Fever - it was a sickness that causes deafness in people.
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After becoming deaf, he was being privately tutored at home until the age of 14 where he enrolled into Maryland School for the Deaf.
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Enrolled into MSD at 1875.
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Since he could not afford to pay for his education. To save money for school, Veditz worked as a foreman for the printing office at Maryland School for the Deaf, where he worked without pay for the first year, then for $6 per month during the second year.
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In 1880, Veditz finally enrolled at Gallaudet, where he studied education as he wanted to be a teacher.
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He graduated in 1884 as valedictorian of his class, and returned to Maryland School for the Deaf to teach for four years.
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He earned a master's degree from Gallaudet in 1887.
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A year later, Veditz moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and he worked as a teacher as well as being an accountant at the Colorado School for the Deaf for 17 years.
When he was there, he started the Colorado Association of the Deaf and met his wife, Mary Elizabeth (or known as "Bessie") Bigler, over a game of chess. -
They married in 1894, and Veditz had continued to play chess, competing against the quite impressive players in the world, including U.S. chess champion and grandmaster Frank J. Marshall and the world chess champion, Jose Capablanca, of Cuba.
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NAD - National Association of the Deaf - Veditz was appointed as the president in 1904 (and he was re-elected in 1907).
He believed so strongly about preserving sign language and the Deaf culture when the education was seen to focus on the oral method of communication.
He worked closely with Oscar Regensburg (who was the first chairman of NAD's Motion Picture Fund Committee) to make some of the earliest films that recorded sign language. -
Veditz was a huge advocate of Deaf rights and did not like what he saw as injustice to Deaf people. Injustice included job discrimination, repression of sign language and the treatment of deaf people as second-class citizens.
He wrote articles to newspapers and newsletters around the United States and gather support by Gallaudet Alumni and deaf advocates to ensure that deaf people have fair go in getting work. -
Veditz had gotten one of the most important people, a Republican presidential nominee: William H. Taft, onto his team of campaigning to get the power reduced to those Civil Service managers - so they cannot refuse jobs to deaf workers or restrict certain jobs to them. After Taft was elected as president in 1909, he made this happen and required all the departments to give a list of jobs that deaf people can apply for. 84 jobs became available.
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The most earliest document of American Sign Language on film - thanks to George Veditz - it is the most valuable item for its historical purposes.
Preservation of the Sign Language -
He died at the age of 75 in Colorado.
