By Garrett
Hello, my name is Garrett and I have just celebrated my eighteenth birthday. I was born in Merced, California and now reside with my family in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Along with reading, I also enjoying running, being with my family, and I am a diehard NASCAR fan.
Because the help I sought in becoming fluent is proving successful, my therapist thought perhaps others could benefit from reading about my experience and encouraged me to answer the following questions for the reader of this article.
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While Jack Paar is among the most prominent of the entertainers on the Stuttering Foundation’s list of Famous People Who Stutter, he deserves special recognition as he was among the first to openly address his stuttering in public. As host of “The Tonight Show” from 1957-1962, he spoke of his difficulties as a stuttering child and teenager, giving hope to young people.
Editor’s Note: The author is a person who stutters. For many years he has been a collector of “stuttering” songs – the good and the bad!
B.B. King
Q: At what age do you remember first being aware that you spoke differently?
An interview with Travis Kruck
*Bruce Willis starred in the 1989 movie Look Who's Talking as the voice of baby "Mikey."
Byron Pitts has brought much attention to stuttering with his memoir, Step Out on Nothing: How Faith and Family Helped Me Conquer Life’s Challenges,released in September, 2009. The book not only details his speech difficulties, but also his illiteracy until age 12 and his unstable family life. Pitts overcame the odds to become a national correspondent with CBS News.
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.
Brothers Dominick and John Gregory Dunne, who died in 2009 and 2004 respectively, are well known as having been famous writers and literary giants.
When moviegoers in the U.S. saw the television ads for the October 21, 2011, release of the new Rowan Atkinson movie Johnny English Reborn, few, if any, knew that Atkinson, most famous for his character Mr. Bean, is a person who stuttered. Unlike some other famous actors, Rowan Atkinson’s stutter is not widely known. However, stuttering still is a factor in his life.
Kirk and John Tarver and their Memphis-based Shelby Railroad Services Inc. raised a record $7,000 to help those who stutter.
Josh Cohen of Cherry Hill, N.J., wanted to do something special for his Bar Mitzvah last October. In fact, his plans had been in the works since the spring time.
In July, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), The Florida State University, and the Stuttering Foundation co-sponsored the third Mid-Atlantic Workshop in Philadelphia.
Since 1985, the Stuttering Foundation has conducted intensive summer workshops in order to increase the pool of speech-language pathologists trained in the latest techniques for the treatment of stuttering. This summer was no exception.
In November 2010, worldwide movie audiences were presented with a most interesting and unusual movie release with The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as King George VI and Helena Bonham Carter as his wife Elizabeth.