S: Speaking of your journey, there's more questions related to Mr. Spiro’s character and what he represented that you felt you did not have at the time. You mentioned some real-life mentors that later on did impact you and combined to be some of your inspiration for Mr. Spiro. Could you share anything or any experiences specifically from those?
V: Well, one's sitting right here. Jane Fraser. I started studying her father. Her father was the founder of the Stuttering Foundation, and I looked at his life. He was in the parts business, and my family was kind of in the automobile business. So, we had a connection there. I did a lot of self-therapy through the Stuttering Foundation books. Here's the sad thing, I was so caught up in myself that the premiere speech organization in the country, I guess the world, was a few blocks from where I grew up. It took me so long to take advantage of it.
It's all a part of this, not wanting to admit that I stuttered. They're my heroes. To bring the problem of stuttering to a fluent community is very difficult because it's such a complicated world. It takes some scholarly involvement, it takes some therapeutic involvement, it takes a lot of training of SLP's, it takes continuing research. I look at SLP's now and the thing I'm most proud of is that a lot of SLP's stutter. I think that's great. I couldn't be more proud of them. It's what we need to do, we need to get it out on the table. And then we can talk about it, and then we can work on fixing it.
And when I say work on fixing it, there are some people out there who stutter, and they're going to be a six o'clock news anchor, more power to them. But there are some people out there who are going to stutter, and it's going to hold them back some. But they need to find that voice, whatever it is, and do whatever they can. I think it's almost like just going off that high dive. You dread it, you dread it, you dread it, but sometimes you just got to do it. And you find out, "Hey, it didn't kill me, so I'm going to try it again."
It takes good organizations; it takes families who are willing to invest some time in learning about stuttering. And then it takes some gumption, it does.
S: Would you say that writing your two books helped you the most on your way to embrace your stuttering?
V: I thought about that question a lot. I didn't mean for it to be a cathartic. I truly didn't. I just wrote it just to tell my story in case I could help somebody out there who was going through the same thing. But I'll go back to another story. I was speaking at a middle school, a large crowd, three or four hundred students, and there was this young lady in the front row. I could tell that she was hanging on my every word. You can kind of spot people like that, and I knew I was going to get a question from her.
Sure enough, when I asked for questions, she raises her hand, and I called on her, and she said, "Do you think you would have written your book if you had not stuttered? If you had not been a person who stutters?" And it was the first time I'd ever had that question. I thought, and I said, "Well, I'm going to give you an honest answer on this. No, I don't think I would have written this book." I thought I had satisfied her but no, she was going to come at me again. She said, "So you can say in a way, you're glad you stutter." I kind of choked up a little bit, and then I went back and I told my wife, I said, "I have just gotten about $3,000 in therapy in one little speech at a school..." I'm not going to say I'm glad I stutter, that's just not right. But I'm glad who I am because of my stutter. It's been a thrilling journey; I can say that.
Vince Vawter, a native of Memphis, retired after a 40-year career in newspapers, most recently as the president and publisher of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press. In 2002-2003 he was president of the board of directors of the Hoosier State Press Association. He previously served as managing editor of The Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel and news editor of the now- defunct Memphis Press-Scimitar. Vince’s debut novel, PAPERBOY, received a Newbery Honor award in 2014. The story is based on his real-life experience growing up in the 1950s as a person who stutters. Vince spends his retirement traveling the country and discussing his books with schools, reading and education groups, as well as stuttering advocacy organizations. He and his wife, Betty, live in Louisville, Tenn., on a small farm in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains near Knoxville. Vince can be contacted through his website:
www.vincevawter.com.
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