Mid 1920s - Father Coakley – DePaul’s First Superintendent

It was during this time that the school’s first superintendent, Fr. Coakley, played a pivotal role in the future learning advancements of DePaul. After his service in Europe as a World War I U.S. Army Chaplain, he committed himself to the various needs of the school. In an effort to provide the students of DePaul with the best resources available, he became invested in the developing research by Dr. Harvey Fletcher and his study of acoustics and sound. See a quote taken from a write-up from DePaul Institute’s First Fifty Years:

“At this time, Father Coakley became deeply interested in the research being carried on by the Bell Telephone laboratories under the direction of Dr. Harvey Fletcher. In the quest for better transmission and reception of sound, a wealth of information had been uncovered, resulting in the development of the audiometer, an instrument through which fragments of residual hearing could be assessed for use in carrying sound meaning to the brain….

Techniques of teaching sound meaning and speech production included the use of tubes, megaphone and {binaural} adaptations of the doctor’s stethoscope. Finding that electrical amplification devices offered by producers of individual hearing aids proved inadequate in the case of the profoundly deaf child, Father Coakley, having heard that Mr. E. A. Myers of Mount Lebanon had developed a high-powered table-size hearing aid for his own ease in hearing, requested that he build the same device for DePaul Institute, with a master control to which outlets for ten deaf children could be attached. This group hearing aid proved eminently satisfactory and was in use at DePaul for many years.”

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Post Card from Fr. Coakley (front and back)