Eva Fielding-Jackson’s successful struggle to build her own life

Written by Earl Mikell, DeafNation

HAVA – Against All Odds
A Deaf Person’s Story
Eva Fielding-Jackson
To be published Winter 2009

What would you do when it’s been mistakenly assumed that you’re stupid, not Deaf, for a number of years? You’d struggle with your life, and try to rebel against the conventional wisdom regarding your disability. Basically, it’d be all about fighting the odds against you. Sometimes you can beat the odds, sometimes you can’t. In this case, the odds went the right way. That’s what happened to Eva Fielding-Jackson. She’s led a life full of beating the odds and, now at the twilight of her life, is putting her experiences down on paper for young people to take something away from her life, and use it themselves.

Even if you don’t factor in her deafness into her account, she still led a remarkable life, of which there is more than enough lessons to take away. Her story begins in Hungary, where she was born in 1954 at the heights of Cold War tensions. Hungary at the time was a Cold War flashpoint; the Soviet Union moved into the country in 1956 in response to a popular uprising overthrowing the country’s Soviet-controlled government. Parker-Fielding-Jackson’s Deaf parents moved the family a year later, emigrating to Israel in 1957.

After settling in Israel, it was thought by many people that Eva was stupid, including her Deaf parents, when she proved unable to speak or hear in her early years. Eva did have some residual hearing, but it actually caused the people to assume that she could fully hear and chalk her off as just stupid, a perception that lasted into her mid-teens. Growing up was an extremely confusing time, as her misdiagnosis left her out of most everything that makes childhood a richly rewarding experience. She did not fit in the social circles that existed all around her in Israel and also didn’t do well at school, both with her classes and her socializing. Eva would often run away from home, just wander around the area, and do frequent smoking breaks. Her parents did not know what to make of her, and one of her teachers later told her he had expected her to become a “whore.”

At the age of 14, long after she had been labeled as being stupid, she was finally diagnosed as being Deaf, not stupid. Unfortunately for her, it had happened too long after her birth, and there was no way to get her childhood back. She went to five different high schools before the age of 18, getting kicked out each time. There had also been no communication access for her, making the whole experience worse. Eva then fell into a life of drugs and sex though not using the drug herself. She was socializing in this circles, further clouding her chances of making it alive to the future that lay ahead of her. But then an opportunity appeared to her, in the form of Youth Work College. It was a life-changing opportunity.

Her college years were most unlike her high school years. It was an open-minded place, very accepting of people like Eva. The classrooms were open-spaced, with the desks shaped in a fashion so as to facilitate easy visual communication, which helped her tremendously. Lip-reading and her residual hearing also helped in this instance, leading her to graduate with a Diploma in Education. From there, it was on to teaching the Deaf in Israel, for four years. Then she married, and moved with her husband, Sid, to near the Israel-Lebanon border in 1979. Interestingly enough, the spot that she and Sid lived in would experience the full fury of the Israel-Lebanon War in 1982, with rockets going out and hitting near them, and battles all around them breaking out. They got through that dangerous time without a scratch, however.

In 1984, the couple moved to England. Eva resumed working with the young Deaf people for 4 more years. Eva then met David and the pair, though married to other partners, fell in love. Ten months later they moved in together and lived in Reading.  Then a job opportunity changed up the tempo of her life. She started working for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in 1989 for the See Hear program, a program aimed at Deaf/Hard of Hearing British audiences. 1993 brought another move, as Eva and David got married and moved to Bristol, England, where they would settle down for the foreseeable future. She got more involved in the British Deaf community, this time working for the British Deaf Association in Wales. Later on she helped teaching Deaf young people how to be qualified Youth Workers, eventually getting 49 of them qualified. At the same time, she was working her way towards a MA in Education and a Post-Graduate Certification (PGCE), both of which she completed with distinction in 2003.

It had been a good number of years in between classes for her, but obtaining the degrees was one of her most proudest moments in her life. Never did she expect to be able to come so far after suffering through the lows of her childhood and teenage years. She then went to work for the local authorities in Bristol for the last four and half years, helping disabled British citizens. The last few years also saw Eva work on her autobiography, meticulously compiling anecdotes and pictures, along with official documents and other information. In 2008, she was appointed as the Vice Chairperson of the British Deaf Association, while also being named a trustee. Winter 2009 will see her sworn into her new position.

Hava – Against All Odds is Eva’s autobiography. But simply chronicling her own life is not the only reason she wrote the book. She hopes to use her life as an example of overcoming the odds, that anybody can beat the odds if they fight. Eva wants to have the Deaf youth see things through her eyes, and understand that if she could do it, they can do it too. Hava is also the story of her parents’ Holocaust experience (her father, for example, survived 7 concentration camps, including the notorious Auschwitz), and the near-run possibility of Eva never getting born and living out this rich life of hers. All these threads come together to form a story of despair, hope, and then success. It is truly a great story about beating the odds.