An Open Thank You Letter to My Speech Therapists

Dear Ms. Carol, Ms. Joan, Victoria, Hope, Amelia, and Taylor,

First off, thank you for all of the work you do not only for myself, but for others. The work you do on a day in and day out basis is more impactful than you know.

To my elementary school speech therapists, thank you for helping me go from a 5-year-old kid who could barely say the letter "r” without stuttering to someone who fluently delivered the keynote speech at my 5^th grade D.A.R.E. graduation ceremony. Thank you for being me with and incorporating my hobbies and interest, from The Weather Channel to The Dumb Bunnies, into our speech therapy sessions. Thank you for the constant encouragement and helping me become more fluent as the years passed. Thank you for compassionately listening to the troubles of a third grader. Thank you for erasing my fears that I was different from all the other kids in school.

To my college speech therapists, thank you for helping me become more fluent via the techniques I learned or re-learned from you. Thank you for being a soundboard when I needed to vent about whatever was on my mind that day. Thank you for allowing me to set my goals and doing anything and everything within your power to help me accomplish those goals. Thank you for conducting our speech therapy sessions on the phone and making me call random places and ask them a series of questions.

I am now far more comfortable talking on the phone because of it. You helped me achieve those goals by conducting numerous mock interviews with me, as a means of preparing for life after graduation. I am a better at interviews because of it. Thank you for making me do so many presentations to the walls of the speech therapy room, to empty classrooms, and to your classes. I am now confident in my public speaking abilities and willingly put myself into public speaking opportunities, something I never would have done if it wasn’t for you. But more importantly, thank you for helping me become more confident and accepting of my stutter.

Thank you for introducing me to different stuttering organizations, I would not know about them if it wasn’t for you. Thank you for being a sound board and listening to me as I struggled to grapple, understand, and accept the fact that I stutter. Thank you for helping me process all of thoughts about stuttering and helping me turn them into positives. If it weren’t for the work done in the therapy room, I don’t know if I would be able to accept and embrace my stutter.

Forever appreciative,

James

Posted July 5, 2017

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Bruce Willis

While the world knows Bruce Willis as an A-list actor, few know that he struggled with stuttering throughout his first 20 years.

Walter Bruce Willis was born in 1955 in West Germany to his German mother, Marlene, and his American GI father, David Willis. The family settled in David’s hometown of Penns Grove, New Jersey in 1957, and the couple has three other children.

Kenyon Martin

Kenyon Martin, the basketball sensation who was named to the NBA’s All Star Team in 2004, joins other famous people who stutter in a new brochure. The brochure - which unfolds into a small poster - is available free of charge from The Stuttering Foundation.

The poster is intended to give children and adults who stutter inspiration as they grapple with their speech disorder.

Bob Love

Bob Love has dreamt about being a great public speaker since his early days in Bastrop Louisiana, even though, as a young man, he could barely put two words together, let alone speak a full sentence.

In spite of his severe stuttering disability, Bob Love, the son of a sharecropper, rose to become a Chicago Bulls NBA superstar, whose records were eventually surpassed by Michael Jordan. Throughout his entire athletic career, Bob Love kept his stuttering a secret from the fans who adored him, thinking he could do his “talking” on the basketball court.

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.

Marilyn Monroe

From Edward S. Herrington's letter to Southcoasttoday.com

I am writing in response to "The importance of voice" (May 29), which mentioned that famous actor James Earl Jones struggled with stuttering. Another famous voice that you cited was the trademark breathy voice of Marilyn Monroe; however, you did not make mention of the fact that Marilyn Monroe also struggled with stuttering at various points in her life, sometimes very painfully.