Maryville College recently honored a Chattanooga attorney and his wife for making a positive impact on the deaf community in Tennessee.
Joshua Anderson – an associate with Gearhiser, Peters, Elliott & Cannon – and Molly Ridgeway Anderson are the recipients of Maryville’s 2024 Kin Takahashi Award for Young Alumni.
The annual award recognizes Maryville alumni who have made significant contributions to the college, their communities and their professions.
The recipients of this year’s Kin Takahashi Award made a decisive impact statewide before they graduated in 2018. Joshua and Molly met as students at the college, and by the time they married a month after graduation, they’d successfully advocated and lobbied for the passage of two Tennessee laws.
Senate Bill 524 and House Bill 462 called for the Tennessee State Board of Education to implement American Sign Language (ASL) textbooks and curriculum and allow the course to satisfy foreign language requirements in Tennessee schools.
The Tennessee General Assembly unanimously passed the bill April 24, 2017; then–Gov. Bill Haslam signed it into law May 4, 2017.
Senate Bill 1514 requires the board of regents, each state university board and the board of trustees of the University of Tennessee to adopt policies allowing ASL courses to satisfy foreign language requirements for undergraduate degree programs.
Haslam signed the legislation in 2018.
Such accomplishments were legacy enough, but Joshua and Molly were not done. In 2021, they traveled to Nashville to advocate for a bill that would require Text-to-911 to be available in every emergency communications district in the state.
Although the bill passed the state Senate, it stalled in the House of Representatives. However, Joshua and Molly’s persistence led to successful negotiations with the State 911 board to implement a policy that calls for every district to implement Text-to-911.
Joshua and Molly’s passion for the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities is personal. Molly was born with a non-verbal disability and uses American Sign Language to communicate.
An inability to verbally communicate during an emergency led to a TED Talk about her experiences and eventually resulted in the Text-to-911 statewide policy.
A native of Florence, Alabama, Molly graduated with a degree in child development and learning. She is the director of peer support at Family Voices of Tennessee, which advocates for the improvement of health care and related services for children with disabilities, chronic illnesses and other special health care needs.
“Kin Takahashi – the namesake for the award – was a positive influence on the Maryville College campus,” she says via email. “His legacy lives on through generations of alumni who also work to serve others and improve their communities. Josh and I are honored to receive his award.”
Joshua earned a degree in political science at Maryville before obtaining his Juris Doctor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
“The motto of Maryville College is ‘Do good on the largest possible scale,’” he adds. “Everyone has the chance to do good and make this world a better place. Molly and I decided we could do good in our community by advocating for change in American Sign Language education and the implementation of Text-to-911 across Tennessee.
“Both were common sense ideas that can help many people but needed a little push to become reality. We’re grateful for Maryville College’s support as we pursued these initiatives and for this recognition.”
Joshua and Molly now reside with their daughter, Lucy, in Chattanooga.