Remembering Bob Love

It is with profound sadness we share the passing of NBA All-Star Bob Love.

Love knew first-hand the experiences of someone who stutters. He overcame considerable frustrations and setbacks since his glory years with the Chicago Bulls.

In the 1970s, he made the NBA All-Star Team three times and led the Chicago Bulls in scoring seven straight years. But he still stuttered, and there were fewer media interviews or endorsements than a player of his caliber would normally receive.

“After my retirement from the NBA, reaction by potential employers to my speaking difficulty turned the usually tough post-sports career adjustment into a living nightmare,” Love later shared. “I had a college degree, but personnel managers seldom call back someone who stutters on the telephone.”

By the end of 1984 — some seven years after millions had watched him play NBA basketball — Love took the only job offered to him. He would wash dishes and bus tables for Nordstrom department store.

Yet it was here that Love’s story began a slow and difficult turn for the better. First, there was the corporate manager of Nordstrom’s, who offered to have his company pay for speech therapy. Enter speech pathologist Susan Hamilton, who would guide Love through countless hours of therapy in which he learned to manage his moments of stuttering and speak more fluently.

“Today my message to young people who stutter and their parents is direct: Don’t wait, like I did,” Love once said. “Speech therapy during childhood has the greatest chance of success.”

Love led the Stuttering Foundation's National Stuttering Awareness Week campaign twice - in 1993 and 2007.

Posted Nov. 19, 2024

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.

James Earl Jones

Actor James Earl Jones, a Broadway, television and movie star, was well-known for his voice as Darth Vader in Star Wars and his book Voices and Silences. Jones spoke some of the most memorable lines in the history of American film, but the man known for his voice was once afflicted with a severe stutter.

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.

Carly Simon

Carly Simon began stuttering severely when she was eight years old.

Bill Withers

While Bill Withers has long been on the Stuttering Foundation's list of Famous People Who Stutter, many people probably didn’t realize he stuttered. He passed away on March 30, 2020.

Born in 1938 in Slab Fork, W.V., Withers was the youngest of six children. When his father died when Withers was small, he was raised by his mother and grandmother, both of whom worked as domestics.