Meet Henry Kisor–Pilot and Author

Posted on September 5th, 2006 by admin

For the last two years, I’ve been contributing articles to the Hands & Voices Communicator. I’m always looking for deaf and hard of hearing people with interesting jobs.

About a year ago, I came across Henry Kisor, a literary reviewer for the Chicago Sun Times. I contacted him and asked if we could meet so I could do an article. Henry was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Criticism in 1981 and the author of several books, including “What’s That Pig Outdoors, A Memoir of Deafness.”

We met for lunch and Henry shared tales about his life’s adventures. Henry took a train trip across America, interviewing passengers by lipreading, and the result was the book:
Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America.

A midlife crisis had Henry pursuing his dream of flying (a dream that he thought he couldn’t accomplish because he was deaf) and he began to take flying lessons. He obtained his pilot’s license and began to do some research about flying. A pilot by the name of Cal Rodgers, came up during his research and he discoverd that Rodgers was hard of hearing. Henry purchased a small plane and decided to take a trip across America, similar to the trip that Cal Rodgers took in the early 1900’s. He penned the tales of his adventure in this book: Flight of the Gin Fizz. I enjoyed this book so much that I wrote a review: Epinions: Flight of the Gin Fizz.

Henry joined the International Deaf Pilots Association and participated in several fly-ins around the U.S. He also wrote three mystery novels and a children’s book. Henry recently retired from 38 years of newspaper writing and is working on another book.

You can read the full Hands & Voices article here: “Mystery Author Unveiled: Meet Henry Kisor.”

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