STUTTERING FOUNDATION REMEMBERS
JAMES EARL JONES 1931 - 2024
was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on January 17, 1931, and at the age of five he went to live with his grandparents, who raised him on a farm in Dublin, Michigan. Once a pre-med major at the University of Michigan, he graduated with a degree in drama, later serving as an officer in the U.S. Army during the Korean War prior to pursuing acting full-time.
When James Earl Jones died on September 9, 2024, at the age of 93 from complications from type 2 diabetes, both the stuttering community and the world at large lost a giant. A front-page article in the New York Times, “James Earl Jones, Whose Powerful Acting Resonated Onstage and Onscreen, Dies at 93”, began, “James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the face menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y.” The Stuttering Foundation lost a great friend and longtime advocate for its work on behalf of people who stutter.
A comprehensive biography of Jones’ life and his extensive body of work is not possible in this article as it will focus on his lifelong struggles with stuttering and how he lent of himself to help his fellow people who stutter. He
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After working many years on Broadway, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1968 for his role as a boxer in The Great White Hope, a role that he reprised in the 1970 film version which garnered him an Oscar nomination. In 1987 he won his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a play for his performance in Fences. The actor was presented with an Honorary Academy Award in 2011, making him one of the few actors to achieve the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony).
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