Oscar H. Regensburg
1868 - 1914
Oscar Regensburg was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Chicago public schools for several years before transferring to Illinois State School for the Deaf. Regensburg attended college and graduated from Gallaudet University in 1890. Following graduation, he moved back to Chicago and where he managed a printing house. From 1894-1896, he printed an independent deaf newspaper, The National Exponent. Regensburg was an activist in the deaf community and advocated for use of the Combined System at the Chicago Day School for the Deaf. While in Chicago, he founded a Literary Circle and co-established a deaf theater called Pas-A-Pas with George Dougherty. He moved to California in 1905 and worked in investment. Also during this time, Regensburg took several leadership positions in the NAD, including chairman of the Motion Picture Fund Committee. A resolution passed by the NAD recognizes Regensburg for raising $5,000 for this committee. In 1913, he appeared in one of the NAD films introducing Mr. Dougherty in the Discovery of Chloroform. After Regensburg?s death in 1914, Roy Stewart assumed the NAD film committee chairmanship.

Roy J. Stewart (1878-1967) was born on a farm in Centerville, Michigan. He was deafened temporarily at age 5 after contracting scarlet fever and permanently at age 9 after falling from a wagon. His family moved to Washington D.C. and Stewart enrolled in the Kendall School. He received bachelor?s degree in 1899 from Gallaudet College. After graduation, Stewart accepted a position working as a clerk and statistician for the United States Census Bureau. The department he worked in was tasked with counting the number of deaf people in the United States. He also served for many years as the head of the Gallaudet Alumni Association and was known around campus as a "walking dictionary of the history of Gallaudet College." Stewart was very passionate and involved in the preservation of sign language. Stewart chaired the NAD Motion Picture Committee for over fifty years.
(Sources for Regensburg: Long, J.S. (1902) "The Deaf in Business - Oscar H. Regensburg, Printer" Silent Worker Vol.14 No.7 pp.97-98; National Association of the Deaf, Proceedings of the Convention (1916) Vol.11; Van Cleve, J.V. & Crouch, B.A. (1989) A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America; Söderfeldt, Y. (2013) From Pathology to Public Sphere: The German Deaf Movement, 1848-1914.)

(Sources for Stewart: Gannon, J.K. (2004) "A Tribute to Roy J. Stewart: He Helped Make Our Sign Language Immortal" Sign Language Studies Vol.4 No.3 pp.225-230; Gallaudet University Archives "Papers of Roy J. Stewart, 1894-1967" MSS 123, (n.d.).)