Born in Peabody, Kansas, in 1930, Willard J. Madsen lost his hearing to scarlet fever at the age of two. He attended public junior high school before transferring to the Kansas School for the Deaf at Olathe, and went on to study at Gallaudet, graduating in 1952 with a degree in education. He taught at the Louisiana School for the Deaf for five years after that until he received a master’s degree from Louisiana State University.

Madsen joined the Gallaudet faculty in 1957, and taught at Gallaudet for the next 39 years until his retirement in 1996. Most of his career was spent teaching journalism and English to preparatory students, and he was also faculty advisor for The Buff and Blue, which he had worked on as a student.

He was also deeply involved in sign language education. As Gallaudet’s coordinator, and later (in 1971) director of sign language programs, he helped centralize and standardize sign language training for faculty and staff. He also oversaw Gallaudet’s training programs for new signers and continuing education courses in sign language for adults. Madsen was involved in developing the Gallaudet Sign Communication Proficiency Interview (SCPI).

Madsen was also a founding member of the American Sign Language Teachers Association (ASLTA), which provided certification for sign teachers across the country. He wrote two textbooks, Conversational Sign Language II and Intermediate Sign Language: A Bilingual Text.

He was well-known as a poet in both ASL and English, and his poems “You Have to Be Deaf to Understand” and “NO!” are considered classics of deaf culture. (Texts of these poems can be found in the Gallaudet University Archives’ Deaf Biographical file for Madsen, as well as in this collection.)

As mentioned in the processing note, this collection also includes some material from the D’Onfrio family. Anthony D’Onfrio was one of the founders of the District of Columbia Club for the Deaf, and with his wife, Evelyn (also known as Daisy), was an important figure in the District of Columbia deaf community.