Lawrence Adolph Shoemaker

Larry Shoemaker was born August 18, 1920 in Hawthorne, CA the fourth of eleven children – seven brothers and three sisters.

He attended Washington School, an oral school in Los Angeles, until one day his father saw some Deaf people speaking to each other on the street in Los Angeles. His father asked the man how he was able to sign and found out about the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley. It was there that Larry's life changed.

He enrolled at Berkeley twice. The first time was in 1928 when he was seven years old. He was surprised to find that there were other kids who were Deaf just like him where he could really understand what everyone was saying. This was so different from the gesturing, “home” signing and the lip reading he used around his brothers and sisters. The school became his home.

When he was 10 his family pulled him out of school and he lived with his aunt while he attended oral school again. He worked odd jobs to support the family and in the summer worked at the Rancho Santa Fe golf course picking up lost golf balls and “selling” them back to the golfers for .25 cents each.

By the time he was 13 he was big enough to work on the fishing boats. He and his brother would get up every morning at 3:00 am, walk two miles to a row boat and row out to a fishing boat. From there they would go out to the ocean and help to catch bait fish. Once done, they would wait for the bigger fishing boats to come and load them up with the bait for the fishermen. Larry would jump onto the bigger fishing boats and go out to sea to help pass out the bait fish. Larry said he would take a bait fish, pop out one of its eyes and throw it over-board. That fish would swim in a circle causing the other bigger fish to come up to it – they would either try to eat it or swim around it. Once the bigger fish were closer to the surface, then they would go for the other fish on the hooks and get caught. Larry also helped gut and clean the fish for the fishermen for tips. He remembers that the seagulls would form a huge cloud around the boats waiting for the fish guts to be thrown overboard.

Once the Depression was almost over and his family was able to get by, he was allowed to return to the Berkeley School for the Deaf, he was 14. Because he missed a great deal of schooling, when he returned he was placed in a lower grade. He studied hard, and every three-to-four months he passed to another grade and soon caught up with his classmates.

He loved all sports, but could not try out for the football team, he was too skinny – only 88 lbs. So, he went out for basketball and track instead. Many of his classmates remember him setting track records in the 440 and the 880 relay. The 880 relay team usually took first place. The team was: Larry Shoemaker, Larry Quijada, Glen Curney, and Mickey Corson. He competed in the statewide track meets, representing the Berkeley Deaf School from 1937 thru 1939. He said they (the school held the record or the relay team?) held a relay record for seventeen years.

While at school Larry was a member of a leadership group of older students who mentored the younger boys. One time the group decided to go to Mt. Tamalpais. To get there they took the street car down the hill to the ferry station, rode the ferry to San Rafael, and walked to the base of the mountain. Then they hiked up hill from there to the top of Mt. Tamalpais. Although they left very early in the morning, it was midnight and very dark when they arrived at the top of the mountain.

Larry laughs when he talks about the hike especially about the hot dog links story. It seems one of the younger boys was assigned to carry the links. You have to remember that this was before buying individual hot dogs in plastic packages. Back then the hot dogs were in long uncut loops and were purchased by the number you needed at the butcher shop and they were wrapped in paper. The boy put them in his back pack. As the group hiked up the mountain, the links managed to find the one hole at the bottom of the back pack. As you can imagine, as the boy went up the mountain, the hot dogs were slowly escaping one at a time out of the bottom of the pack. Since the boy was last in the line of hikers, no one saw the long rope of links following him, bouncing on the trail and getting covered with dirt. When they got closer to the top of the mountain, someone started talking about how hungry they were, and he asked who had the hot dogs. That’s when they discovered the long rope of dusty hot dogs that followed them up the trial trail.

At this point when he is telling the story Larry is laughing so hard, we don’t know if they washed the links off, roasted them on sticks and ate them – or just threw them away. Yet, somehow they managed to stay in a small cabin for two days before packing up and getting back to school which took just as long as when they came.

His life at school was also filled with fun – even though he was considered a good boy he was also known as a prankster. His favorite person to tease was Rose Hoy, whom he eventually married.

When Larry started moving up through the grades and finally got into Rose's class, she was surprised and thought that he must be very smart and let him help her with her homework.

Larry remembers he always tried to get her attention – he would take a rubber band and put a paper wad in it, or an eraser, and hit her with it just to say hi. Or he would always go and sharpen his pencil so he would have to walk by her. It made her mad – she would always say that he was pestering her. One time she tried to play the rubber band and paper wad trick on him, but she held it wrong and it hit her in her face. Larry laughed which made her even madder at him. He says that she must have not been too mad, because she went with him to a prom. She was a little nervous that he would do something silly, but he behaved. He did, however, put his name on every line in her dance card so that she would dance with him all night. She never changed it.

Larry said that they were taught different trades at CSD to prepare for when they graduated. Larry said he learned shoe making and repair, carpentry and baking. He says His first outside job interview was at a bakery shop in San Diego. He got hired and was to report the next day to start, but he wasn’t really excited – the bakery kitchen was dusty with flour and hot with the ovens going all day. His older brother John told Larry to come with him and see if they could get him a job more to his liking, as ground-keepers at the Rancho Santa Fe Golf Course. Larry says he loved this out door work. He and his brothers were known to be good caddies as well as good golfers. A wealthy businessman and golfer, Mr. H.H. Cotton, always insisted that the Shoemaker boys caddy for him whenever he played, because he knew they understood the game and the course. Mr. Cotton was one of the founders and developers of the City of San Clemente.

Larry graduated from CSD in the early summer of 1941. Later that same year, World War II broke out. Larry went to enlist but and was classified as 4F. But being a the patriot, he left the golf course to work as a welder at a defense plant, Ryan Industries, in San Diego. While working at the plant – Larry had a chance to run track again. The Department of the Defense put on a track event for all of the workers against the Army and Navy. Larry entered two races – the 220 and the 440. On the first one, 220, he jumped the gun; when they lined up again, he didn’t see the gun go off and was left behind. The 220 was so short, he know he wouldn’t be able to make up the distance, so he withdrew. Larry then ran the 440 and he succeeded in coming in second. Unfortunately, he had not run track since graduating from school two years ago. So the next day at work, he had leg cramps and could barely move around at work.

A few months later he moved to Berkeley, where he and five of his buddies from CSD roomed at a boarding house on Dana Street while working at a bay area defense plant. That was the beginning of "The Berkeley Gang" - Larry Shoemaker, Charles Corey, LeRoy Pate, Bob Querre, and Bob Chick. They were five good-looking men, with money to spend and an appetite for fun. When they had enough gas-rationing stamps, they would pile into one car and go up to Lake Tahoe to ski. But, because of the war rationing, they mainly went to the Oakland Club for the Deaf on weekends. One night when they were out at the club - one of the five bet Larry that he couldn't stop drinking and smoking. He certainly won that bet – he never drank or smoked from that day on.

After the war was over the gang started to move on getting other jobs and starting families. Larry married his high-school sweetheart, Rose, and relocated to the San Joaquin Valley where he still resides today. Together they raised five children, have five grandchildren, and six wonderful great grandchildren.

Larry and Rose were leaders in the central valley deaf community and deacons in the deaf church, which was pastored by a traveling deaf minister, Reverend Milton Wilson, who served several deaf churches in the Central Valley. The Fresno and Visalia deaf church community had over 100 congregants. After Saturday night services in Fresno, the Deaf would meet up at their favorite restaurant in Fowler on Highway 99 to continue socializing and there was always a potluck after the Sunday church service in Visalia. Mid-week there was usually a gathering of the women to work on quilts, cooking, gardening or plan parties for the community.

In 1948, Larry was asked to take over the running of the central valley Deaf picnic, held at Roeding Park in Fresno every year that drew deaf people from the entire state of California. The picnic was potluck, with games and prizes. Every year seem to draw more and more people; in the final years it was hosting over 200 people. Larry, with the help of Harold Bock, ran their first picnic in 1948, later Reno Coletti joined in 1960, and 26 years later, the reins were handed over to Gary Stingley. It is now run by DHHSC, a Fresno-based organization that serves the deaf.

Another annual activity was organizing group camping trips; this was before the RV. Where ever they met, there was always a ring of tents that enclosed a community tent in the center where everyone came to eat, play games and talk into the all hours of the night.

Larry is forever [thankful that he had been lucky to find out] grateful because of how he had been lucky enough to find out about Berkeley at a relatively young age. Based on his own experience and his believing in the importance of Deaf children attending the School for the Deaf, Larry and Rose made a point of talking with hearing parents who lived in their town about the importance of their Deaf child attending the School for the Deaf for their education and future happiness. Larry and Rose were able to convince four families to send their child to attend Berkeley – they feel very proud of that fact.

In 1957, Larry’s interest in golf was renewed. It was after a California Association for the Deaf Conference in Fresno that a few of the golfers organized a fun golf game. The game was so enjoyable, that Larry and Bill Dunn organized and established the Central Valley Chapter of the Far West Golf Association of the Deaf (FWGAD). The Chapter quickly grew to ten members. The first tournament was held in Alameda in 1970 and in Fresno in 1971. The Chapter was the first to award cash prizes; in the past they had awarded just gifts. Things went off without a hitch and now cash prizes are a common practice. Larry continued to play regularly through the years and has won tournaments and awards. In 2007 he was inducted into the Far West Golf Association of the Deaf's Hall of Fame.

Larry's employment began as an apprentice carpenter, moving up to a journeyman and finishing as a carpenter foreman for the last seven years before retiring in 1985. Because of his CSD training, plus his father was a carpenter and one of his younger brothers, Calvin, was a cabinet-maker, this influenced Larry to make carpentry his career. By the time he retired at 65, he supervised a crew of 10 to 20 fellow carpenters in finish carpentry. They communicated through writing, gesturing and some of the crew learned sign language. Larry built houses all over the Bay Area and Central Valley. To honor Larry's 20 years of service, the company gave him a retirement party attended by all of the big bosses. Who knows you might be living in a house Larry helped build.

Larry still lived in the same house in Hanford where he tended the small garden areas around the house. He keeped in contact with his deaf friends by video relay, and he boards the train to Fresno almost every Thursday where he goes to the Deaf Senior Center to play games and visit with his friends which now includes the younger crowd (50 -80 year olds) because all of his classmates are gone.