James Theodore Flood was born on February 16, 1905, the fourth of eight children of James B. and Martha (Gehl) Flood of Elyria, Ohio. He spent his childhood in Elyria, where he attended the public schools until at the age of 12 he contracted spinal meningitis and became totally deaf. He dropped out of the school and worked at the Columbia Steel Company for a few years. He enrolled in January 1920, at the Ohio School for the Deaf in Columbus. He graduated as class valedictorian in June 1923. The following autumn, he enrolled in Gallaudet College. He graduated from Gallaudet in 1928 and he went back to his home state, Ohio where he worked first as a boy’s counselor for two years and then as a teacher for 45 years at the Ohio School for the Deaf. He retired in 1975.

He received a second bachelor’s degree in education in 1932 and a master’s degree in special education in 1940, both from the Ohio State University. Gallaudet University honored him with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1964.During his teaching career, Dr. Flood worked tirelessly as a board member, executive secretary, and public relations man for the Ohio Home for the Aged and Infirm Deaf. Among his greatest achievements was the established of Columbus Colony, the nation’s first planned community for elderly deaf people.

For years, James Flood was the executive secretary of the Ohio School for the Deaf Alumni Association. During his lifetime, Dr. Flood attended many workshops related on aging, handicapped and deaf people. Also, he involved in Safe Driving Program for Deaf Drivers. Along with Robert M. Greenum and Frederick Moore proposed the unification of all State (and local) organization of the Deaf. At a meeting called for such purpose, the Ohio Federation of Organization of the Deaf was established. It later became the Ohio Association of the Deaf, through merger with the Ohio Deaf Motor’s Association. Dr. Flood was honored with a larger than life framed picture of him unveiling during the Reunion of the Alumni Association in 1985. The picture is presently hanging in the lobby of Columbus Colony.In August 1943, James Flood married Kathryn Beryl Buster of Kansas City, a Gallaudet University classmate and teacher of home economics at the Ohio School for the Deaf. After Kathryn’s death in 1975, Dr. Flood married Ruth Imogene Price in 1979. Ruth died In 1981.Dr. Flood passed away at his residence in Columbus, Ohio on September 24, 1990 at the age of 85.Sources: Collection Synopsis, James T. Flood Papers, MSS 901, The Ohio Historical Society; Vita Resume of James T. Flood; and Gallaudet Alumni Newsletter, Vol. 25, No. 3, November 1990.