Norma Lewis, who was the nation's oldest active sign language interpreter, has died

Andrew Wolfson | Courier Journal

Norma Lewis, the oldest working sign language interpreter in the United States and a pioneer in the field, died Sunday. She was 97.

Lewis, who was active until 2017, was one of the first interpreters to give deaf people a voice in the court system, the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing said on its website.

"She was a very funny person and a wonderful person," said Virginia Moore, the commission's executive director. "She was a mother, a mentor, and a person of the highest standards and professionalism."

Lewis also was sign-language interpreter for the Archdiocese of Louisville Mass of the Air on WHAS-11 for at least 37 years.

Her work with the deaf community began when she was 9 years old when she interpreted for her deaf aunt and uncle, who raised her in Connecticut. She went to live with them and learned their language, interpreting the priest’s homilies after Mass, according to a 2014 profile in The Record, the archdiocese's newspaper.

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Lewis, who was born June 26, 1922, was honored in 2014 for her service by Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, who said she had helped the “spoken word come alive for countless individuals” and always did so “with a huge smile and an optimistic attitude.”

The city saluted her decades of service interpreting for people in the court system, for Catholic worshippers, patients, students and voters.

"You need to let them keep their dignity so they can participate in the world with equal access to communication," Lewis told The Record.

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She said she had she interpreted for Robert Kennedy on his famous trip Appalachia in 1968, and for Ross Perot when he was campaigning for president.

She didn't retire until 2017, when she was 95.

She was renowned for teaching court personnel sign language swear words, recalled retired Family Court Judge Joan Byer.

"She had a great sense of humor," Byer said.

Court administrator Carla Kreitman said Lewis was "an exceptional human being, ridiculously kind, witty and genuine. She taught me some great sneaky sign language (somewhat 'off color') to express myself when perhaps I couldn't say out loud what I wanted to. She is loved and will be missed."

Lewis wrote a book in 2005 based on her own divorce titled "Divorce After Fifty Ain't No Disgrace, But It Ain't No Honor Either."

Attorney Steven Kriegshaber said she stopped driving only after she tore off the side-view mirror for the fourth or fifth time backing out of her small garage. And he said when she was finally forced to move from her house into Treyton Oaks Tower, and invited to join a knitting group that matched residents with high school students, she was too active for that and started a storytelling club instead.

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During World War II, she enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to Charleston, S.C., to work in 6th Naval District in combat intelligence, plotting the courses of American submarines — and the German submarines gathered in wolfpacks not far offshore.

"We sent out air patrols and blimps,'' Lewis told The Courier Journal’s Bob Hill for a 1999 column. ``We had men in rowboats pretending to be fishermen. We'd get dispatches from them and plot courses on a situation board.''

She worked in the elegant Fort Sumter Hotel, her office its former beauty salon, its windows offering a broad sweep of the Atlantic Ocean where, in the war's early days, torpedoed American merchant ships could be seen glowing on the horizon.

She and her colleagues took a vow of secrecy that was so strict that they couldn’t talk about their work until 50 years after the war.

In June, her wartime service was celebrated with an honor flight to Washington.

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/andreww.