All in Due Time :

Meet Russell

Russell doesn’t have a life story that’s nearly as interesting as his wife’s. He’s from New York and that should give us enough information to understand who he is.

Russell went to the Lexington School for the Deaf. He’s from a Deaf family. After he’d been at the school for a couple of years, his parents decided to leave New York. They had allergies and wanted to be in a different climate. They moved to Florida (Russ explains how he’s seen a new name sign for Florida, but he prefers using FLA the way he’s always done). He attended and graduated from a mainstream public school. The reason he went to a public school is that the school for the deaf in Florida…well….sucked. After that, he went to Gallaudet and graduated in 4 years. He just wants people to know that he had a great time there and he’d recommend Gallaudet to anyone!

Russell met Melody after he graduated. He was a Teaching Assistant to several professors in the Business Administration program. He noticed Melody and thought he might want to ask her out. They eventually were set up on a blind date that ended up lasting 12 hours. He’s not sure there’s enough tape to talk about everything that happened, but he wants to give us an idea of just how exciting that date was.

For reasons he doesn’t explain, he and Melody were actually at a restaurant and as part of the date they were handcuffed together. Unfortunately for Melody, her left hand was cuffed to Russ’s right – and she’s left-handed. It was incredibly frustrating for her and Russ because every time she tried to sign she’d have to use the hand cuffed to him, which was not very pleasant. Luckily for Russ, he’s left handed as well so he had no problem signing or eating, but his right hand was always being jerked up and down at the same time because Melody would be signing to him, although she was able to eat with her right hand. To make a long story short, they ended up getting married in San Francisco (not Sioux Falls, even though both places had the same name sign), at the Palace of Fine Arts. Interestingly, the wedding also took 12 hours. They have several incidences of number repetition in their relationship that they’ll explain more as they go. One year later, they had their first child in Sioux Falls. They wish it could have been in California, but unfortunately it didn’t work out that way.

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