Page 64 - Coffee County

Dudley’s branch of the Vickers family tree. Therefore, when Jessie Mae Vickers gave birth to twins on Sept. 7, 1958, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Dudley and Donna were just another set of twins in a family known for giving birth two at a time. The twins progressed normally, and they experienced a typical childhood growing up on the family farm near Ambrose. Their parents, Jessie Mae and Orvis, began to notice something was odd when Donna started talking. She was chatting away but Dudley was not. He showed no other symptoms of irregularities. Still, to be on the safe side, his parents took him to the doctor, frst to their pediatrician in Waycross and then to specialists across the Southeast. “Our pediatrician said girls talk before boys. He said there was nothing wrong with Dudley and he would start talking soon,” recalls Jessie Mae. They waited and waited, but Dudley never spoke. Even more baffing was the fact that Dudley did everything Donna did. Tell him to get something and he would get it. Tell him it was time to eat or take a bath, and he ate or took a bath. “He just couldn’t talk,” says Jessie Mae. Dudley ended up at Emory for further testing. The evaluation stated that he was very intelligent and defnitely did not suffer from hearing loss. Dr. Calvin Meeks in Douglas remained unconvinced. After the trip to Emory, he advised Jessie Mae and Orvis to take Dudley to a specialist in Augusta. The frst doctor who looked at him was unsure and sent him to a speech therapist. It was there that doctors fnally confrmed that Dudley could not hear. They deemed his hearing loss as moderate to severe. From that point on, the Vickers family embarked on a quest to see if anything could be done to correct their son’s hearing.

One thing was certain – the Vickers family was not interested in institutionalizing their son. Particularly during that time, many people did not want to care for children who were not deemed “normal.” Orvis and Jessie Mae

were different. Whatever their son needed, he would have. In addition, he would not be sent somewhere to fend for himself with strangers. Wherever he went, at least one of them would go as well. After exploring a few options, Dudley began attending school in Cave Spring at the Georgia School for the Deaf. Cave Spring is a 275-mile trip from Ambrose – and the Vickers’ family’s trips pre-dated I-75. It was a long, hard trip, but one they felt was necessary. Jessie Mae rented an apartment in Cave Spring and stayed up there during the week with Dudley. On the weekends, when possible, they came home to spend the weekend with the rest of the family. When they returned, Orvis would drive up there with Jessie Mae and Dudley, and then catch a bus back home. “I just couldn’t stand to send him off like that by himself, not at that age,” states Jessie Mae.

At the Georgia School for the Deaf, Dudley excelled. He was a superb student who always took schoolwork seriously. He understood he was there to learn, and he made the most of his time in the classroom. After he had been there for a little over four years, another surprise hit the Vickers household. Jessie Mae found out that a fourth child was on the way. Prior to the arrival of Wesley, the baby of the family, Jessie Mae and Orvis pulled Dudley out of the school for the deaf and returned home.

This presented another challenge. Where would Dudley go to school? They settled on a school in Fitzgerald that offered classes for deaf or hard-of-hearing students. Each day, Jessie Mae took Dudley to school and returned to pick him up – 160 miles per day. He went to school in Fitzgerald for three years. Then they decided to move him into the public school system in Coffee County. By this time, he was in junior high, and Dudley was as well prepared for school as any other student in the county. Several family members had worked with him, notably Margaret Vickers and Glenda Corbitt, who spent hours tutoring Dudley.

At Coffee Junior High School, Clayton Mathis worked with the Vickers family to put Dudley in the right classes. He knew which teachers had the patience to teach him, and he knew which ones to stay away from. Mr. Mathis did not cherry pick an easy schedule for Dudley; rather, he made sure Dudley had what he needed to succeed. “When he got to public school, he didn’t have any trouble at all. He made honor roll several times, and his teachers went out of their way to help him,” says Jessie Mae. When his mother mentions Jeanine Dovers, a long-time junior high math teacher, Dudley smiles and puts his hand over his heart. He also smiles at the mention of Mrs. Mingledorf, who wore bright red lipstick so Dudley could read her lips better. “He didn’t get any outside help other than the teachers who took up extra time with him. He didn’t have any speech therapy or any special education classes,” says Jessie Mae. Dudley was probably the frst special needs child who