John Tracy, the deaf son of actor Spencer Tracy who inspired his parents to establish the pioneering John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles that helps young hearing-impaired children and their families, died Friday at his son’s ranch in Acton, Calif. He was 82.

He was 17 when his mother, Louise Treadwell Tracy, first spoke publicly about rearing a deaf child. The speech at the University of Southern California led her to found the clinic in a campus bungalow in 1942, and she helped build the nonprofit agency into a leading institution for deaf education.

“As a child, John Tracy couldn’t have known that he would be the inspiration of a whole movement to give new hope to parents of children with hearing loss,” Barbara F. Hecht, president of the clinic, told the Los Angeles Times.

The clinic was among the first to start a hearing-impaired child’s training in infancy and make parent education a critical component. It has helped an estimated 245,000 parents and children.

John Ten Broeck Tracy was born June 26, 1924, in Milwaukee to two actors who married between the matinee and evening performances.

When Mr. Tracy was 10 months old, his mother became alarmed when a door that accidentally slammed shut failed to wake him.

Afraid to tell anyone, even her husband, Louise consulted several doctors who told her that her son had “nerve damage, cause unknown.” They also said he would never talk.

“Through his mother’s perseverance and as many as 3,000 repetitions of one word, Mr. Tracy learned to speak and lip-read, Ladies Home Journal reported in 1972.

Despite a bout with polio at 6 that left him with a weakened leg, Mr. Tracy began riding horses at 9. He also became a dedicated polo and tennis player.

He went to Pasadena City College and his father spoke at his graduation.

After attending what is now the California Institute of the Arts, Mr. Tracy worked for several years in the art props department at Walt Disney Studios. He stopped working when his eyesight started to fail in the late 1950s.

Well into adulthood, Mr. Tracy learned that his deafness was caused by Usher syndrome, a genetic disease that eventually would steal his eyesight. By the early 1990s, he was legally blind from retinitis pigmentosa.

Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Co. newspaper.