The Goodyear Silents was a semi-professional football team based in Akron, Ohio, composed of deaf players. Most, if not all, of the team worked for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. During World Wars I and II, many industrial companies hired deaf people, including Goodyear and Firestone in Akron. In existence from 1915–1927, the team played against local and regional semi-pro teams, and compiled an all-time record of 68-35-11; in the process, they won several league championships.

The most disappointing moments the successful team experienced was their failure to defeat cross-town archrivals Akron Pros, losing all four games to this team. The Akron Pros was one of the pioneering teams in the fledging NFL. The four losing scores were: 9-0, 20-7, 6-0 and 14-0.

Joe Allen, one of the Goodyear Silents players, was the only one to continue his career in semi pro football after the team went out of business.

Jewish Deaf Community Center newsletter, Los Angeles, CA

Akron Pros

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. Amos originally served as the lead singer of 1980s synthpop group Y Kant Tori Read, and as a solo artist was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s. She was also noteworthy early in her solo career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument. Some of her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date.

As of 2005, Amos had sold 12 million albums worldwide. She has been nominated for 8 Grammy Awards. Amos was also named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in 1996.

Amos was born in Newton, North Carolina. When she was two, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she began to play the piano. By age five, she had begun composing instrumental pieces on piano and, while living in Rockville, Maryland, she won a full scholarship to the Preparatory Division of the Peabody Conservatory of Music. Her scholarship was discontinued at age 11 and she was asked to leave. Amos has asserted that she lost the scholarship because of her interest in rock and popular music, coupled with her dislike for reading from sheet music. In 1972, The Amos family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, where her father, Reverend Edison Amos, became pastor of the Good Shepherd United Methodist church. At the age of 13 she began playing at gay bars and piano bars, chaperoned by her father.