Local stutterers share tough experiences
oroup members met
with graduate students
Tuesday for International
Stuttering Awareness Day
Brook Reinhard
News Editor
Lo Caudle is not a fast talker.
She does not rush her words.
Sometimes it takes minutes for
her to speak a full sentence.
Caudle stutters. She’s stumbled
over her words for 54 years.
But her tricks of the tongue
have become an old friend for her.
“As a kid 1 was a really shy girl,”
said Caudle, as she struggled to get out
the words. “Now I can’t shut up.”
The 57-year-old Eugene woman
has dealt with her own special
way of speaking since she was 3
years old. Now a buyer for the
Museum of Natural History and
chapter leader of Eugene’s local
National Stuttering Association,
Caudle has found ways to get by,
and is helping other stutterers to
do the same.
One of Caudle’s most difficult
ordeals is tolerating people who
aren’t patient with her.
“People act as if you were hard
of hearing,” she said. “They’ll go,
‘HELLO?’ and enunciate, ‘MAY I
HELP YOU?’ and I’m going, ‘Will
you stop screaming?’
I just feel that people who stut
ter are so creative and so bright.
And the listener responds as if
we’re dumb.”
On Tuesday — which was
International Stuttering Awareness
Day — Caudle and two others in
the support group met with a group
of graduate students in the speech
and language pathology program at
the University to talk about life as
a stutterer.
“For years, I tried to hide the
fact that I stuttered,” said an
Albany man who only gave his
first name, Dick. “That ruled out
a lot of career choices.”
Dick, who’s now retired, said he
often would take jobs that had lit
tle human contact so he wouldn’t
have to speak very much.
“I thought then that (speaking)
would have a negative impact on
what I was doing,” he said in a slow,
measured voice. “But I’ve accepted
the fact that I’m never going to be
completely fluent — it’s just part of
who lam.”
Stutterers deal with their speech
problems in different ways. Some,
like Caudle, embrace their quirks
and make it part of their personali
ty. Others, like Dick, hide their dis
ability as much as possible. They
use breathing techniques such as
easy onset, which train stutterers
to keep air passages open to create
whole words without cutting off
any sound.
And then there’s Eric Sprado.
A giant of a man with a huge
white beard and stretched sus
penders, Sprado has no problem
being upfront about his stuttering.
“A little kid will ask, ‘Why do
you talk funny?”’ he said. “Moms
will grab their kids and freak out,
but I’ll tell them, ‘I’ve talked like
this since I was 18 months old.’
They’ll say, ‘Oh, OK,’ and it will
be fine, and then it will never
worry them. It’s just like asking
someone if you have black shoes.
Then you know.”
One time Sprado, a real estate
broker, had a customer who want
ed to know about farmland.
“Pretty soon he said, ‘Isn’t
there anyone in your office who
can TALK?”’ he said. “I told him,
‘Well, that kind of falls under the
tough shit category.’”
Laura Deer, a speech and lan
guage pathology graduate student
who was attending the group
Tuesday, said it’s her goal to focus
on the stutterers who want to
improve their speech.
“Some people will want to work
on their issue and be more fluent
and some others will continue
stuttering,” she said.
Caudle said people are most
respectful of stutterers by
Danielle Hickey Emerald
Jessica Fanning, a doctoral student in communication disorders, hosted a support
group on Tuesday night for International Stuttering Awareness Day.
being attentive.
“Keep eye contact,” she said.
“Be patient. Don’t say it for us.”
The local chapter of the
National Stuttering Association
meets the first and third Tuesday
of every month in the lounge of
the Clinical Services Building.
Meetings are open to everyone.
E-mail Lo Caudle at
loie@efn.org or visit www.nsastut
ter.org for more information.
Contact the news editor
atbrookreinhard@dailyemerald.com.
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if something falls from the tree, it
could be dangerous.”
Gummer said he thinks there is a
high concentration of homeless peo
ple in the West University neighbor
hood, but added he does not think it
is an unsafe place to live.
“I don’t think homeless people
cause harm — they are mostly
harmless,” he said.
University senior Marie Malpass
said she thinks homelessness is sim
ply common in today’s society.
“There are rich people, and there
are poor people,” she said. “I don’t
know how to stop it, but they are go
ing to be everywhere, and people
just have to get used to it.”
Weinman said he has not heard
complaints about the West Universi
ty neighborhood, but that doesn’t
mean there are not homeless people
in the area. He said the neighbor
hood does have low income housing,
and many homeless people go to the
area to receive help from organiza
tions like the White Bird Clinic.
Weinman said the community
has a lot of programs to help people
living in poverty, but it is not
enough. He said the local and state
governments do not have the mon
ey to solve the problem.
“The state government doesn’t
seem to be interested in the prob
lem,” he said. “So it just goes on.”
Gummer said Eugene moved out
because the real estate company
discovered they had an extra tenant
living there.
“It was the middle of winter at
the time, so we paid whatever fines
the real estate company gave us,
and as soon as he found a place to
go, he moved out of our shed,”
Gummer said.
Gummer said he was glad to have
had the opportunity to meet Eugene.
“He’s a genius,” Gummer said. “It
amazes me the stuff he did. He even
built his own bicycle with miscella
neous parts. It was all different col
ors, but it was working.”
Contact the reporter
atdaniellegillespie@dailyemerald.com.
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