Annie and Tony are the co-authors of Jill's First Day of School.

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     Annie is the third born in her family of nine children. After graduating high school, Annie went on to several years of college before interrupting her studies to marry and begin raising three children of her own. In mid-life, she decided to resume her education and, though dyslexic, achieved a BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Annie’s work experience was in global business working with diverse teams to always exceed company goals.

     In Annie’s family, four siblings were born profoundly deaf while five had no hearing impairment. The mixture of hearing and hard-of-hearing siblings made for a very vibrant and non-traditional upbringing for all nine kids. Their mom, Alice, believed in a method of education for her hearing-impaired children that included lip-reading and sounding out words clearly. She also expected her hearing children to work with, help, and support their brothers and sisters in all aspects of daily life. This help included correcting and repeating mispronounced words and phrases, keeping everyone knowledgeable in large gatherings, updating them on television shows (pre-closed captioning) and even setting bullies straight. Annie has always been asked if she or any of her siblings learned sign language, and when she replies “no," people are always surprised! Annie’s mother thought that sign language, a method of conversation limited only to those who could perform and read sign, was too constricting and did not fit into her ideas of what her children could achieve. Alice’s vision was that her hard-of-hearing children could do so much more if they were EXPECTED to do more.

     The story of Jill’s First Day of School was told to Annie by her mother. It relates the strength and courage of Annie’s sister Jill as she overcame her deafness by jumping into a hearing school after attending one for the hard-of-hearing. Annie thought the story perfectly captured many of the experiences she remembered growing up and decided to put it into book form. With the help of her husband Tony, this book is the result of that vision.

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     Tony has spent his working life in management, or as owner of his own businesses. After ten years managing retail stores in the 1970s for a national discount big-box chain, then ten years in the 80s as general manager for a growing Midwest gasoline/convenience chain, Tony decided to take the plunge and work for himself. He then developed the first of several successful businesses. From an initial start-up wholesale bakery, he then moved on to a laundromat/linen rental operation, followed by several convenience stores and finally a respected investment property management business. Through all of these ventures, he continually replicated and applied the lessons he had learned from working with others. The common thread to ALL his endeavors was his ability to communicate to others the goals he set and needed to achieve to be successful. He has carried forward this knowledge of communication and writing skill to help his wife Annie with her work in using Annie’s mother’s reminiscences of her life as matriarch of a mixed hearing and hearing-impaired family.