An Eloquently Golden Ride on the Red Carpet

"We have a voice. We have been heard."
David Seidler, while accepting his Oscar for The King's Speech

For more than five months, The Stuttering Foundation has been raising awareness of stuttering through supportive interviews about the acclaimed movie The King’s Speech. From its opening in November through awards season in Hollywood this winter to its golden coronation at the Oscars at the end of February, we have trumpeted the movie’s message of hope to thousands of media outlets around the world, including CNN, Time, PEOPLE, the Los Angeles Times, Agence France Presse and The Washington Post.

Equally as exciting is the announcement that our 60-second Public Service Announcement is included on The King’s Speech DVD, which was released on April 19. We hope everyone in the stuttering community will purchase their own copy to view and treasure this tremendously heroic story for years to come.

Because of the enormously positive impact The King’s Speech has had on our mission, The Stuttering Foundation honored the movie, its cast and crew at a gala in New York City in April.

At the gala, Foundation president Jane Fraser honored the movie for raising awareness of stuttering “beyond any level we could ever imagine.” She also thanked the actors for their “accurate portrayals of the anguish faced by people who stutter” and for “opening up honest dialogue about stuttering and its treatment.” Finally, she thanked the director and screenwriter “for giving us a hero and a movie we can look to for inspiration, much as my father looked to King George VI more than six decades ago.”

She also announced Academy Award-winning actor Colin Firth has been named honorary chairman of National Stuttering Awareness Week, May 9-15, 2011. “Colin and the entire cast and crew of The King’s Speech have done such an amazing job raising awareness for the stuttering community,” Fraser said. “Our focus during this special week and the months and years to come will be to convert that awareness into action.”

-From the Summer 2011 Newsletter

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Bill Walton

From BillWalton.com

Thank you for your interest in my life long problem with my speech and communication skills. I was a very shy and reserved young man who could not speak at all without severely stuttering until I was 28 years old. Always a success in the classroom and on the basketball court, I took refuge in the things that I did well as a youngster. A straight A student, my athletic abilities covered the deficiencies that limited my overall growth and development. The game of basketball was my religion, the gym my church. It was a convenient way of avoiding my responsibilities of developing my human relation skills.

When I was 28, a chance encounter at a social event with Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Glickman completely changed my life in so many ways that things have never been the same since, nor have they ever been better. That day, in a very brief, private conversation (one way, mind you, since I literally could not speak at the time) Marty explained, patiently and concisely, that talking, communicating was a skill not a gift or a birthright and that like any skill, whether it be sports, music, business or whatever, needed to be developed over a lifetime of hard work, discipline, organization and practice. Marty gave me some simple tips that day and then encouraged me to take those keys and apply them to methods of learning that I had received from the special teachers that I had come across in my life, particularly the 6 Hall of Fame basketball coaches that I had played for throughout my career. The beginning of my whole new life was as simple as that. No gimmicks, tricks or shortcuts. Just the realization that with some help, guidance and a lot of hard work that I too could do what seemed so easy, simple and natural to everyone else, yet seemed impossibly out of my reach and comprehension.

Ken Venturi

As much of the nation watches the U.S. Open Golf Championship, it is impossible not to think about our late friend Ken Venturi. Ken overcame many challenges to win the Open at Congressional in 1964 and go on to become the voice of golf for more than three decades.

However, Ken faced no bigger obstacle than stuttering. Ken Venturi was a champion to those who stutter, going out of his way to share his personal experience when consulted by a colleague, friend, or child who stutters.

Winston Churchill

Seeking to "remove Winston Churchill's stutter by second guessing the diagnosis" indicates neither a truthful retelling of history nor an informed opinion about a complex speech disorder, say experts in the field of speech-language pathology.

Recent news reports that quote Dr. John Mather, a Washington physician, as saying that Churchill's stutter "is a lie" brought adamant critical response from specialists in the field of stuttering and fluency disorders.

Lewis Carroll

The recent Disney version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, garnered a great deal of media hype. Even though the mainstream media has not made mention that Carroll was a person who stuttered, his family history gives credence to the discovery of the genetic link to stuttering. Carroll was born to parents who were first cousins; almost all of their eleven children, three girls and seven boys, struggled with stuttering past childhood.

Frank Wolf

This Virginian congressman has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981. The longtime supporter of the Stuttering Foundation drew national attention to childhood stuttering in 2006 when he submitted an article about Tiger Woods from the SFA newsletter to the Congressional Record. The congressman is featured in the Stuttering Foundation's Famous People Who Stutter brochure.