VINCE VAWTER

Vince Vawter, author of the 2014 Newbery Honor Book Paperboy, is a native of Memphis. He worked in newspapers for 40 years, rising from sports writer to newspaper publisher. Vawter retired in 2006 to devote full time to the book he always knew he would write, the story of a boy who battled a debilitating stutter while growing up in a racially segregated Memphis in the 1950s.

In addition to the Newbery Honor, Paperboy is a selection of the Junior Library Guild and was named a Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction for Youth by the American Library Association. Delacorte Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, published the novel in May 2013.

He first worked as a sportswriter for the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial. For the next 13 years he was at the Memphis Press-Scimitar as a copy editor/news editor and then for 10 years was the managing editor of the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel. In 1996, he was named editor and president of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press, and in 1998 became publisher and president.

Since the publication of his book last year, Vawter has made presentations or video chatted with more than 50 groups interested in his story. He was the keynote speaker at this year’s 44^th Annual Mid-South Conference on Communicative Disorders in Memphis.

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CELEBRITY FOCUS

John Stossel

John Stossel is one of the most recognized and articulate reporters today. However, he once considered giving up his broadcasting career because of his stuttering.

“Fear of stuttering can easily become worse than the stuttering itself,” observed Stossel. “The idea that I’m on television and making speeches is still a shock to me sometimes.”

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.

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.

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.

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.