In Admiration of the Life of a Past AG Bell President

Dear AG Bell Community,

As I write this, I am saddened to hear of Inez Janger’s passing. She was a tremendous inspiration to those who had the pleasure of working with her, including to us here at AG Bell. Her extraordinary resume as a past president includes founding the AG Bell New York chapter, revolutionizing our membership as well as chapter operations, developing AG Bell’s Parent Advocacy Training (P.A.T.) program and managing the Auditory-Verbal international merger (known today as the AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language). She will be missed, and her legacy lives on through our programs as well as efforts helping children born with hearing loss learn spoken language. “For as long as we live,” poets Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Riemer write: “They too will live, for they are now a part of us.”

She is survived by her sons Michael, Matthew and Edward; her daughters-in-law Victoria Eastus, Meaghan Janger, and Elise Brady; and her grandchildren Emma, Max, Sophie, Lily, Ruby, and Finn. Michael, marketing professor at Gallaudet University who is deaf, is finishing his doctoral candidacy at the Grenoble Ecole de Management in France studying consumer behavior among deaf and hard of hearing shoppers. Professor Janger seeks to spotlight, for businesses, this consumer base he feels overlooked by most companies and foster a better business relationship with shoppers who have hearing loss. 

“Inez Janger was a strong, smart, tenacious, and kind woman,” AG Bell Chief Strategy Officer Gayla Guignard remembers. “As an AG Bell parent leader, and particularly in her role as Board president, she was exceptional in her knowledge and abilities. She led AG Bell during the period in which the AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language was established, and, we will always be grateful to her for her guidance through that process and significant transition towards the future.”

She was laid to rest Friday, September 14th, at Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Cemetery, West Spring Street, Tisbury, Massachusetts. In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to the Martha's Vineyard Donors Collaborative (P.O. Box 1018 West Tisbury, Massachusetts 02575) at www.mvdonors.org/donate or the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (3417 Volta Place NW Washington, D.C. 20007) at www.agbell.org/give. More information is available here.  

We, the AG Bell family, want to express our deepest condolences to the family. We will always cherish her memory.  

Until next time, 

Emilio Alonso-Mendoza

Chief Executive Officer

Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

“We cannot see her, but she is with us. A mother like ours is more than a memory. She is a living presence.”

Parable of Motherhood (1933) by Temple Bailey.