Leonard M. Elstad, third president of the Gallaudet College, was born on February 8th of 1899 in Osseo, Wisconsin. His association with education started in 1917 as he taught in a one-room rural school in North Dakota before he went to college. After a year, he went to St. Olaf College. Upon his graduation, he attended the Normal Program of Gallaudet College. He became teacher after a year in the program. He coached women’s basketball and men’s baseball.

In 1925, Elstad was hired to become assistant principal of Wright Oral School in New York City. He became principal when Dr. Edwin L. LaCrosse resigned to pursue legal career. In 1932, Elstad moved on to become superintendent of Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf in Fairbault. Gallaudet College hired him to become their third president in 1945. Elstad retired in 1969 as president. He died 91 years old in Wisconsin on June 27, 1990.

Wright Oral School started as John Dutton Wright, and Thomas A. Humason founded Wright-Humason School, located on 42 West Seventy-sixth Street in 1894. This school was set up to be a private oral school with a limited enrollment of 25-30 pupils. The name changed to Wright Oral School in 1902. Helen Keller attended this school as a young girl to learn how to read with her fingers instead of lip-reading and to improve her speech. This school relocated twice, first to One Mount Morris Park, West (known as One Nathan Davis Place later on) and then, in 1934, to 124 East End Avenue in East River. During Elstad’s term as principal, the school suffered financial hardships that continued until its demise in 1958 under Matie E. Winston, who took over after Elstad left in 1932. John D. Wright died in 1952, and Matie E. Winston died in 1968.