BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Tom Lewis Anderson, known as "TLA", was born on June 2, 1888 in Denison, Texas. He became deaf at the age of 12 from scarlet fever. In the fall of 1906, Tom entered the Colorado School for the Deaf. He passed the college entrance examination and the next year, he attended Gallaudet College. Tom graduated from Gallaudet in 1912. He worked various jobs: one was in Duluth, Minnesota where he was an editor of a magazine and agent of Acoustic Company. He was also a farmer and a partner in a logging business. He married his college sweetheart, Anna Vaughn Johnson of Minden, Nebraska in 1912. They moved to Texas, and a daughter, Elizabeth, and a son, John, were born.
 
Tom got a job as a manual training teacher in a high school in Minden, Nebraska. In his spare time, he pursued outside studies and wrote a thesis on "Mental Training Through the Head" for which Gallaudet awarded him the Master's degree in 1918.
 
A tragedy struck the Anderson family--Tom's wife, Anna, died as a result of the Spanish influenza epidemic in 1919. Tom placed his two children in the care of his sister in Dallas, Texas and started a new life. He met Effie Weseen, a native Nebraskan, at a banquet of the Mid-West Chapter of the Gallaudet College Alumni Association. Effie was a 1918 graduate of Gallaudet. In October, 1920, they got married and lived in Minden.
 
Mr. and Mrs. Tom L. Anderson both got jobs as teachers at the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs in 1921. The next year, Tom was appointed as a vocational principal of the school's vocational department. He was an editor of the school publication, The Iowa Hawkeye. He founded and published The Vocational Teacher. They worked there for many years, until they moved to Texas where he worked as a vocational counselor in Austin for 6 years. He was credited with having placed 400 deaf war workers with the North American Aviation Company. His experience with human relations caught the eyes of California vocational authorities who lured him to San Francisco in 1948. His wife, Effie, taught at the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley. Tom retired in 1952. His hobby was woodworking, which kept him very busy.
 
Tom was President of the National Association of the Deaf from 1940 to 1946. He was also President of the Gallaudet College Alumni Association from 1936 to 1943. In 1939, at its 75th anniversary convocation, Gallaudet College awarded him a honorary degree of Doctor of Pedagogy in recognition of his valuable service to his fellow men.
 
Tom died at his home in Oakland, California on September 16, 1966 and was buried in Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito on September 20.