Gallaudet Chooses Interim President

"My life actually moved forward" after he became deaf, he said. "I never had any sense of loss."

He learned sign language at the school. And English.

Davila remembered lying awake wondering whether there was a way to pay Gallaudet's $800 tuition. And going to the post office two or three times a day watching for a letter from Gallaudet. He was too scared to open it and ran home to show his mother.

He had been accepted.

Davila graduated in 1953 and went on to teach.

He was a good and caring teacher, said Weiner, one of the other finalists, who took algebra from him at the New York School for the Deaf in the mid-1960s.

When Davila got his master's degree at Hunter College, it was before interpreters were required, so he sat in class hearing nothing but getting extra reading lists from the professor. He went on to Syracuse University to get a doctorate.

He returned to Gallaudet and led the elementary school there.

He went on to be a vice president and professor at Gallaudet, director of the New York School for the Deaf, head of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and an assistant secretary at the Department of Education.

He recently retired. Now he is starting anew. So is Gallaudet, in a sense.

"I have no magic answer," Davila said, "but I am a good leader, able to bring people together." At the end of the day, he walked arm-in-arm with his wife through the campus. It was quiet, peaceful; students were busy studying for finals.