The FBI’s First Deaf Agent: Sue Thomas’s Story of Faith and Character

This is Lee Habib, and this is “Our American Stories,” and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports, and from business to history, and everything in between, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. Sue Thomas became the first deaf person to work as an undercover specialist, doing lip-reading of suspects for an elite surveillance team with the FBI. In nineteen ninety, Thomas wrote her autobiography, entitled “Silent Night,” which became the basis for the TV series “Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye.” The continuing story of her life is chronicled in “Staying in the Race,” where Thomas shares stories about living with multiple sclerosis.

Here, Sue Thomas. Some of you might have remembered that TV show called “FBI.” And as I traveled around the country speaking, I find that I keep getting asked three most popular questions. Question number one: Are you the real Sue Thomas? Question number two: How long did you work for the FBI? Only for three and a half years, just long enough to get a TV show out of it? And question number three: Did you really run down the street catching the bad guys? Do I look like I ran down the street catching the bad guys? It’s put an awful lot of fun. You know, if you look back on my life, it has all the elements for Hollywood: the drama, the action, the intensity, the loss. And yet, when it came down to actually telling the real story of Sue Thomas, Hollywood wouldn’t even touch it. I’m going to share the story that Hollywood wouldn’t even touch. That journey started out very early in my life. At the age of eighteen months, I went very suddenly, in the evening, profoundly deaf. There was never a cause, none. I wasn’t safe. I just had my cure in one moment, and the next moment I was walking the path of silence. Years were spent with the speech therapist in front of a mirror with my hand on her throat, feeling the vibes and making those same vibes. At the same time, I would be looking in the mirror, watching her form her lips to make the word, and then for me to try to form my lips the same way. After years of speech therapy, came voice lessons, no, not for a professional thing, but only to get my voice to fluctuate, to go up and down and up and down. And after years, the voice came to dramatic reading, only for the articulation and enunciation of words. So many, many years have gone into this voice, and yet I know I still talk funny. And people say, “Oh, no, you don’t!” But I do. “Well, how do you know?” “Well, I can be at the airport, a restaurant, a hotel, any place at any time, and somebody will always come up to me and say, ‘Where are you from? You really have an accent. It’s just a little bit different.'” And I’m aware of that. I went to public school. My teacher put me in the first row so I’d be able to read lips as best that I could. I really didn’t understand too much, but I tried to follow what the class was doing. And I remember that day, as far as watching the students stand by their desk, and I finally figured it out: they were introducing themselves to their classmates. It became my turn that day, and I remember getting up and standing beside my desk, and very proudly looking out at my classmates, singing something like, “And what that?” The entire class erupted in laughter. Those kids were laughing so hard that day. I turned around to try to figure out why everybody was laughing, and when I couldn’t figure it out, I just sat down. But I came to realize that every time I was to open my mouth to speak, the entire class would erupt in laughter. And I got to the point where I wouldn’t open my mouth. For twelve years, I sat in the silence, and never once did I open my mouth. And at school, the final moment of having my teacher come up to me one day at my desk, and she looked off beside that day, and she reached down and took my hands in hers, and she led me out of the classroom. And that day seemed blooked with an awful on one. And that was the day I entered another class. I entered what was known as the dummy class. And now all these kids had more ammunition to work with. I just didn’t talk funny; I was now the dummy. There were three things in my life as a child that saved me from total despair. One: my parents went to church on Sundays, and they tried to instill in me that there was a God that did not make any mistakes.

And you’re listening to the voice of Sue Thomas. Yes, and my goodness, what a childhood it must have been. “I just didn’t talk funny. I was the dummy.” And I know we can all conjure up what that must have been like for her, as many of us may have been those kids laughing at her, or at least hurting for her and not standing up for her. And then she hears about this God that doesn’t make mistakes. When we come back, more of Sue Thomas’s story, a unique and beautiful voice, here on “Our American Stories.” Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we’re asking you to become a part of the “Our American Stories” family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy-six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now, and go to the donate button, and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with “Our American Stories,” in the story of Sue Thomas.

Sue Thomas, let’s continue.

“Well, how about movies, Ms. Thomas? Do you go to movies? Is it any better there?” “Oh, yes, I go to movies, and it’s a lot better. It really is. You know, it’s the lips; they’re a lot bigger.” On and on went the questions, and I came to realize that the FBI had a huge problem. They were working on a case in which they video-filmed the suspect, but when the camera activated, the sound mechanism failed. They had all this film with the bad guys talking; they just couldn’t hear it. They wanted to know if I would sit and watch the film and write any words down that I could. I said, “Sure, no problem.” From that day on, I never went back to reading fingerprints. From that day on, I read lips for the FBI, and they summed up my job. I followed the bad guys around, and I read their lips. Then I went and told the good guys what the bad guys were saying, and they even paid me to do it, too. And overnight, like the snap of a finger, I finally made it in the world of sound: good job, good salary, somewhat of a novelty in Washington, where I began to be invited to the Congressional and State Department parties. And for three and a half years, I lived in the fast lane of Washington, D.C., celebrating my sisters. I’m thirty-five years of age, when I’m at the prime of the FBI. For thirty-five years, I have hated every step step that I turned. When I was young, my parents tried to instill in me that God never made a mistake, and in my youth I believed them and I held them. But supposedly, with each passing year of getting older and supposedly wiser, I began to doubt them. But by the time I’m with the FBI, I totally doubted God, and I wanted to confront him once and for all. I wanted him to confess that, yes, indeed, he had made a mistake. So I resigned from the FBI to go to Columbia International Seminary CIU in South Carolina. Not to go there to become a preacher, and not to go there to become a missionary, but with only one objective: to confront God face to face, to ask him why he made a mistake. The mistake with him minor, it was major. I mean, after anybody that would know of the mistake would have consideration of why I had to do this. Here wasn’t enough that He created in me a heart that loves people. I love people, and that came by God’s creation that he put within me. But it’s compounded by the issue that even though he created that love and I wanted to be with people, he allowed the silence to overtake me, so that it was physically impossible to be with people. That, my friends, is a mistake as a whopper. He doesn’t give somebody something and then remove it in a tangible way where they can’t have it. Helen Keller said it best when she said, “Blindness separates the person from things and the objects. Deafness separates the person from people.” She was right. “Oh, yeah, I’m a good lip-reader. In my prime. I can be in a high-rise building in New York City with a pair of field glasses, looking across the street at another high-rise building and telling you word for word what was being said. I’m good… or I was. I’m so good. I can even do two people, and that’s like watching tennis. Somebody will talk, they’ll stop, they’ll stop, they’ll talk. There, I can get it. But you add a third person and a fourth person, I start deteriorating. I cannot function in a group. What my heart wants to, so desperately, so badly. I love to party. I love to be with people, but I can’t. I can’t. I got to the seminary. God was waiting. You see, He didn’t just give me one or two friends in seminary that I could relate to. He had twenty-five friends waiting for me. Twenty-five! I can’t be with three people long. Twenty-five! And yet, every day we got to class together. We were sharing meals together, we were studying, we were praying, we were singing, we were always together. And these people saw their outward show of a super, the party animal, happy girl, living the lie. Because what they didn’t know is that when I left them, I went back to my apartment, I totally destroyed everything that I can get my hands on. The bitterness and resentment started during the first year of first grade. That puts me at six years old, from the age of six to the age of thirty-five. That baggage had grown with each passing year, that I was a broken person. I was a resentful person. I despised. There wasn’t a shred of happiness within. And now I’m with twenty-five new friends, and what…

What a story, folks, and my goodness! With each passing year as I got older, I began to doubt that God doesn’t make mistakes. At thirty-five, I wanted to confront God once and for all, and about one thing: that yes, he did make a mistake. And my goodness, to hear her talk about her bitterness. The bitterness and resentment had started in the first year of first grade, at the age of six, right up to the age of thirty-five. That baggage was growing with each moment. There wasn’t a shred of happiness in me. When we come back, more of this remarkable confession, this beautiful confession, here on “Our American Stories,” and we continue here with “Our American Stories” and with Sue Thomas’s story. And now, here’s the final part.

So many times I cried out to God, “Please give me my hearing! Please just let me hear!” And it was always the same answer: No. So I turned from God. And I more or less gave up on him. I went to a friend in seminary, and I told her a lie. I told her that I had a terminal disease, that I was dying, because in my warped mind, I thought if she believed me, she would want to spend as much time with me one-on-one. And that’s exactly what happened. But what I didn’t realize the split second that I told that lie, that it would last for seven months. And I had no idea that the first person I told that lie to, that it would have fanned out to those twenty-five people. And surely I had no idea that that lie would totally consume me and destroy those seven long months. And I was wasting away, and there came a point that I could not take it any longer. And I went to that same friend, and I said, “Please call my advisor in school. Tell him that I needed to see him as soon as possible.”