< ( GPEOPLE Samuel Greene honored as first deaf educator By Henry Bury The Intelligencer Samuel Thomas Greene was hon- ored Tuesday at Sir James Whitney School. And the celebration extended to Milton and London, Ont., as well. Greene was the first deaf educa- tor in Ontario. He taught at the On- tario School for the Deaf (now Sir James Whitney) from the day it opened in October of 1870 to 1890. The Dundas Street West school for the deaf -- as well as the two other provincial schools in Milton and London -- celebrated Samuel Greene Day Tuesday with every- thing from skits and story telling to baseball and a barbecue. Craig Barnes, Whitney's princi- pal, said the deaf community "owes a lot to Samuel Greene. "He's credited with using Ameri- can Sign Language in an Ontario school for the deaf and providing us with a learning model that was al- ready in place in many American schools," Barnes said. As well, Greene, an American, was a deaf role model for students at the turn of the last century. He co-founded the Ontario Deaf- Mute A&sociation (now the Ontario Association for the Deaf) and served as its first president (from 1886 to 1890). Greene died in 1890 as a result of injuries in an ice boating accident on the Bay of Quinte. He was buried at Belleville Cem- etery. (A Belleville street now bears his name, Greene Street, located be- tween Howard and Ponton Streets). Whitney school erected a histori- cal marker in Greene's memory in 1995. Tuesday's celebration was also a fund-raising event to help replace Greene's aging monument at the cemetery. ip.