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= Ruth E. Bender =

Introduction
Ruth Elaine Bender was a contributing women to the field of Speech Language Pathology and Deaf Education. As an educator, clinician, and expert in hearing disorders and deaf education, she devoted most of her career educating hearing impaired children in the United States for more than 40 years. She completed several degrees throughout her life and was well known for her groundbreaking work and advocacy for hearing impaired children. In addition, she also worked with parents and teachers to educate them about the ways they could help deaf children. Through her various publications, she contributed insights into the struggles that deaf children face because of their hearing impairments.

Early Childhood
Ruth Elaine Bender was born on February 24, 1902 in Somerset county in Springs Pennsylvania. She was the third child of Daniel Henry Bender and Ida E. Miller. When Ruth was two months old, her mother passed away. After her mother's death, Ruth lived with her maternal grandparents, Elias M.Miller and Catherine J.Miller, until the age of 11. Ruth's father married twice after her mother's passing, and she was the third child from five sons and two daughters on her father's side. At the age of 11, Ruth moved to Kansas to live with her father and his second wife.

Personal Life
Ruth Bender's father was President of Hesston Academy and was also a minister and bishop of the Mennonite Church. She attended Hesston Academy and later Hesston College. She was known in the Hesston community through her father. When she was 27, Ruth confessed to incestuous abuse from her father due to pressure in revival meetings from Maurice A. Yoder. Maurice A. Yoder was a pastor of the Hesston College congregation, business manager at Hesston College, and and chair of the local board that governed the College. Yoder wanted her to confess any "secret sins." Ruth Bender confessed that she was abused by her father when she was a teenager. Yoder made the confession public in 1930, and Ruth Bender's father, Daniel H. Bender, wrote a letter confessing the abuse of his daughter ten years prior. Ruth Bender had been working at Hesston College and was allowed to continue working, but Yoder expressed that he wanted to "quietly take Ruth out" in order to maintain the prestige of the college. The executive committee did not hold Ruth responsible for her father's actions years earlier, and they allowed her to stay at Hesston College. Yoder continued to write to the executive committee and gathered people from the Heston community to threaten to boycott the school if Ruth continued to be part of the university. Yoder and the community did not stop until Ruth Bender was eventually fired. Ruth Bender was never married, and after the story about her abuse became public, her relationship with the Mennonite community was damaged as well. She passed away at age 96 on May 3, 1998 in Goshen, Indiana and was buried at Elkhart Prairie Cemetery.

Education
Ruth Bender graduated from Hesston Academy in 1920 during the time when her father was President of the academy. She continued her higher education at Hesston College and received her bachelor's degree in 1927. Ruth Bender started teaching Latin and French at Hesston College. In 1929, she pursued a master's degree at the University of Iowa with a concentration in English and French. During the summer of 1930, Ruth Bender was fired from Hesston College and decided to continue her education by pursuing another degree. From 1931 to 1932, she completed a second bachelor's degree in nursery at the Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College in Chicago. Ruth Bender later moved to Pittsburgh in 1934 and studied at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. In 1946, she moved to Cleveland, Ohio where she completed a doctorate degree in Speech and Hearing at Western Reserve University.

Career
During her time at Hesston College, Ruth Bender taught French and Latin until 1930. In 1935, she moved to Pennsylvania and started working at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf where she worked for eleven years until 1946. Ruth Bender later became part of the faculty at Western Reserve University as a professor for speech and hearing. In addition to teaching deaf children for over 30 years, Ruth Bender dedicated herself to help students with hearing and speech problems. She taught them ways in which they could receive help to be successful at Western Reserve University while she was working at the university. After completing her PhD, she was named Assistant Clinical Professor of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the Western Reserve Speech Department. Ruth Bender also worked at the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center and became Associate Director and was in charge of children's auditory disorders. In 1947, she worked alongside Assistant Professor of speech and hearing at Western Reserve University, Dr. Rachel Dawes Davies, and the Director of Clinical Services at the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center, Dr. Warren H. Gardner. As part of the study, she was a teacher helping deaf children learn to speak and understand speech. She talked to children as if they had normal hearing and spoke names of objects while showing the objects to them. Her goal was to have children learn and understand the name of objects, requests, and action verbs through the repetition. She also taught children to speak through the method of vibrations. The children participating in the study would touch her throat to feel the vibrations of her larynx while she spoke. Throughout her time at the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center, she also became supervisor of a preschool hearing program. In addition to educating children, Ruth Bender educated parents and teachers on how they could help hearing impaired children succeed in their education and lives.

Publications
In 1960, Ruth Bender published a book called "The Conquest of Deafness: A History of the long struggle to make possible normal living to those handicapped by lack of normal hearing which was the first thorough history of the field of deaf education. The book was published by the press of Case Western Reserve University, earlier known as Western Reserve University. This book was the first to give a detailed overview about the history of working in deaf education. Her book is categorized under education, special education, and physical disabilities, and it goes over the life of adults and children who are deaf. The book includes topics, such as hearing aids, lip reading, and finger spelling. In 1964, Ruth Bender also contributed to a book called "Early Guidance of Hearing Impaired Children" written by Grace Margaret Harris. As an educator to deaf children for nearly three decades, Ruth Bender contributed her expertise on deaf education and helping deaf children.

Journals
Ruth Bender published an article relating to helping young children with hearing impairments. In January of 1957, The Elementary School Journal published her article titled "The Case of The Child with a Mild Hearing Impairment." In the article, she advocates for hearing impaired children in having the opportunity to receive additional help in their studies. She argued that the additional struggles that hearing impaired children have with learning are neglected by teachers and parents when they are exposed to a normal classroom environment. She believed the children would learn and benefit more if they received special assistance to help them with the challenges they face due to their hearing being impaired.