Carolyn Stockwell Perry, ’77, a long-time educator of deaf and hard of hearing high school students and a devoted mother and grandmother, passed away on February 20, 2026 at her home in Bowie, Maryland. She was 73.
According to her daughter, Rachel L. Cooke, G-’13, the cause of death was ovarian cancer.
Carolyn was born on February 6, 1953 in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Marion F. and Norman D. Stockwell. She was the youngest of three children; her brothers, Norman D. Stockwell and Donald M. Stockwell, were 12 and ten years older.
Carolyn, who was deaf, attended public schools and graduated from St. Martin Episcopal School in Metairie, Louisiana. While growing up, she enjoyed her family’s annual cross country road trips and camping trips, often to visit with family members. A passionate New Orleanian, Carolyn also enjoyed po’ boys, red beans and rice, jambalaya, beignets, king cakes, and Mardi Gras.
After completing high school in 1972, Carolyn attended Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana for two years. This was in the days before support services for students with disabilities were mandated by federal law. In August 1974, she transferred to Gallaudet College (now University) in Washington, D.C. She immediately proclaimed Gallaudet “home” and formed many lasting friendships and memories. During her first night on campus, “A violent thunderstorm cut power to the dorm while we were in the basement for a new residents’ meet-up. What an introduction!”
During the summer of 1976, the year that America celebrated its bicentennial, Carolyn completed an internship with IBM in Palo Alto, California. She lived on the Stanford University campus with other deaf interns.
After receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics in December 1976, Carolyn worked at the United States Department of Agriculture, then the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. Of her government job, she wrote, “This was just as Gerald Ford’s presidency ended and Jimmy Carter’s began. I saw firsthand how projects being completed under one president and new projects were put on hold while waiting for decisions from the new president.”
Carolyn soon felt a new calling, to become a teacher. She earned her master’s degree from what is now McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland in 1980, and taught at the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind in Talladega, Alabama for four years.
In 1984, she returned to the Washington area, where she became a high school mathematics teacher at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, part of the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center on the Gallaudet University campus. She was highly respected and loved by teachers, staff, and students, and was known for her ability to clearly communicate arcane mathematics concepts to her students. Later in her 32-year career at MSSD, Carolyn assumed a number of supervisory and student support roles.
Both of Carolyn’s children attended the Gallaudet University Child Development Center. Mark, in fact, was a member of its first class. As her children became older, they enjoyed summers by the pool, swim team practices, and road trips to visit grandparents and other family members. Much later, Rachel followed her parents in earning a degree from Gallaudet, a master’s degree in interpretation.
Carolyn retired in 2016 and segued immediately into a new role, as grandmother to Rachel’s children, Penelope and then Maxwell. “Caring for Penelope during the first years of her life was an honor.”
However, when Penelope’s brother Max was born, Carolyn found it increasingly hard to commit to his care. She did not know at the time that illness was brewing. Soon afterward, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. During her four years of living with cancer, she received excellent care at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, and had the great fortune to have Rachel and her husband Casey accompany her to “basically all appointments, all chemotherapies, and all trips to the ER, and taking care of me in other ways.”
Carolyn also found solidarity with other cancer patients, including Dr. William Ennis, a history professor at Gallaudet. Dr. Ennis recalls that “It was a late evening and Carolyn and I had been texting only to realize we were at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the same time, and on the same floor. Billy went to visit Carolyn in her room. Later, the nurses [on my wing] were looking for me, and they called my wife Natalie because they could not find me. She told them to check Carolyn’s room. where I was ‘busted.’”
Carolyn was also close to Janne Harrelson, a long-time Clerc Center colleague who also had ovarian cancer. “Together, we became involved with the local National Ovarian Cancer Coalition program led by Nancy Long, and attended our first NOCC Teal Walk in Annapolis, Maryland in 2022. I was truly saddened that our time together was so short [because] Janne passed away the following year.”
Carolyn is survived by her son, Mark N. Perry and his wife Jen; daughter Rachel L. Cooke and her husband Casey; grandchildren Penelope R. Cooke and Maxwell N. Cooke; sister-in-law Helen Stockwell, who she had known since preschool; several nieces and nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, and a great-great-niece. She was predeceased by her parents, Marion F. and Nelson B. Stockwell; her brothers Norman D. Stockwell and Donald M. Stockwell, and a niece, Susan W. Kibre.
There will be a celebration of Carolyn’s life on Friday, May 8 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Peikoff Alumni House (“Ole Jim”) at Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue NE, Washington, D.C.
The two organizations listed below are central to finding and tracking the ongoing fight for screening tools, treatments, and support for survivors as well as friends and families of women with ovarian and other gynecological cancers.
National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC) | Donate
Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA) | Donate
