Mark Brown was determined not to let his stutter get the better of him.

This article about Major Mark Brown of The Salvation Army appeared in the organization’s June 2011 issue of “Faith & Friends.” Major Brown received stuttering treatment at Hollins Communications Research Institute (HCRI – www.stuttering.org), based in Roanoke, Va. HCRI scientists pioneered the concept of behavioral stuttering therapy and have continued to develop treatment innovations that help people who stutter acquire the skills to speak fluently and spontaneously.

By Patrick Patey

As a community relations and development secretary, Major Mark Brown is committed to getting the word out about what The Salvation Army does. But for him, getting words out at all can be a challenge.

Mark stutters. Somewhere between his brain, where his thoughts run pure, and his tongue, where they come out like a skip on an old broken record, something prevents him from fluently expressing his thoughts. The handicap frustrates and dismays Mike.

“Someone who has a speech impediment looks relatively normal until he starts to talk,” he says. “Sometimes you block on a word or start having a painful-looking facial expression because you are trying to say something.”

“Every time a person who stutters walks into a store or goes for a job interview or asks somebody for a date, he’s thinking, How am I going to pull this off?” he says. “I never feel adequate to completely express myself.

“Your Best Shot”

Mark came to the United States from London, England in 1993 to direct The Salvation Army’s Office of Media Ministries. For the next nine years, he worked behind a camera or in an editing room where he wasn’t typically required to speak in public.

But in 2001, he was appointed area commander in Alabama and then soon after transferred to Texas. Suddenly, Mark found himself on the other side of a microphone, and center stage at a variety of public venues.

The appointment was the biggest challenge of his career. Expectations were high, and public image was a priority. Mark was forced to daily draw on his courage. “Most people find public speaking daunting, but for me it’s terrifying,” he says. “You take a deep breath and give it your best shot.”

Fateful Speech

Six months into the appointment, Mark stood before a large audience at a Sunday evening worship service in Dallas where The Salvation Army presented a Christmas concert. Although Mark was unaware of it, in the audience that night was another stutterer named Charles Goodson.

Charles still remembers how others, even adults, made fun of him as a child.

“What people thought about me and the way I talk always bothered me,” says Charles. “But when I heard Major Brown talking in spite of his stutter, I said to myself, ‘If Major Brown can do that, I can do that.’”

Now a member of The Salvation Army who has given a personal story of faith in public, Charles believes that God had a plan in bringing the major into his life.

“I’ve come a long way with my stuttering thanks to the major – and God,” Charles says. “God used Major Brown to help me and I’m certain I’m going to help somebody else.

Doing the Most Good

Mark isn’t sure why he stutters but there’s one thing he is sure about.

“I don’t want anyone to think negatively about The Salvation Army because I can’t express myself clearly or adequately,” he says.

That, in part, is what motivates him to see intensive speech therapy to help with his fluency. Every three to five years, he spends a week at a [stuttering] research institute in Virginia [the Hollins Communications Research Institute], where he learns and practices skills to minimize the involuntary repetition of syllables.

“I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m not looking for accolades. I do what I do because I am called by God,” Mark says. “It is not something that I take lightly. I do the best I can. I try to do the most good I can every day.”

About HCRI

Hollins Communications Research Institute was founded by Ronald L. Webster in 1972 to investigate stuttering through scientific discovery and treatment innovation. Under Dr. Webster’s direction, Roanoke, Virginia-based HCRI, a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization, has become an international leader in stuttering research and the development of innovative, scientifically based therapy approaches.

The Institute offers 17 stuttering therapy programs annually, each of which lasts 12 days. HCRI clinicians have treated nearly 6,000 people, aged 10 to 73, from across the U.S. and 47 other countries. Clients include broadcaster John Stossel of Fox News; Annie Glenn, wife of Senator and Astronaut John Glenn; as well as athletes, teachers, engineers, students, doctors, military personnel, business professionals, police officers, actors, and others from all walks of life.

For more information about HCRI’s approach to stuttering therapy, visit www.stuttering.org or call HCRI at 540-265-5650.

The following article, written by Kathryn Gregory, appeared in “The Charleston Gazette” on March 26, 2011. It is being reprinted with permission to illustrate the impact of Hollins Communications Research Institute (HCRI) stuttering treatment.

Gary Michael McComas grew up poor, like many children in the West Virginia hills. But one very distinct thing — an intense childhood stutter — set him apart.

Growing up on his grandparent’s tobacco farm in Lincoln County, “we didn’t have [an indoor] bathroom until I was 14,” he said.

Some rural Appalachians have low expectations of what their kids can accomplish, McComas said. In his case, with a debilitating stutter that prevented him from speaking in class or ordering in a restaurant, there wasn’t much hope.

“I had almost negative expectations,” he said.

People assumed he would get a minimum-wage job that required little, if any, social interaction, with no real advancement opportunities.

But somewhere along the way, “I decided that something in me wanted more and I knew that I could do more and be more and have more.”

Now, three college degrees, two start-up companies and a pilot’s license later, he can say things didn’t really turn out how people expected.

“Not quite,” he said with a laugh.

Life with a stutter

McComas, 51, said growing up with a stutter was a struggle.

“Trying to ask a girl out on a date when you stutter, that is hilarious,” he said.

When he left the safety of his small town to pursue a degree at Marshall University, McComas had a name changing experience.

“I had a chemistry teacher that had us fill out a form that asked for first name, middle initial,” he said. Up to that point, McComas had gone by his middle name, Michael. Afraid to make a spectacle of himself by pointing out he preferred not to go by his first name, he wrote Gary M.

It stuck. Years later, McComas goes by both names, a direct result of his childhood stammer. “I was painfully shy, and on top of that I stuttered, so I couldn’t, wouldn’t [tell anybody] different.”

Now, the Lewisburg resident is ready to share his story. And it stems from an unlikely place. McComas got the idea after watching “The King’s Speech” win Best Picture at the recent Academy Awards.

“For the first time, it’s kind of cool to have a stutter,” he said with a smile.

The movie, which was written by a man who stutters, shows numerous scenes where King George VI, played by Colin Firth, tries to master his stammer.

McComas was subjected to many of the same therapies, including one where he placed an entire handful of marbles in his mouth in an attempt to correct his stutter.

“Just like everyone else, I almost choked to death on them.”

After attending several therapies in the 1960s that were “very ineffective,” McComas tried something else in his late 20s.

“I tried this other therapy that involved putting a rubber tube in your year and talking and measuring the amount of air that was coming out,” he said. One of the main things common to stutterers is holding their breath while they speak.

It wasn’t until McComas was 36 that he found a therapy that would finally alter his speech.

He spent 21 days at the Hollins Communications Research Institute in Roanoke, Va. The school works to retrain mouth and throat muscles so people can speak without stammering.

“I have went from literally not being able to order food in a restaurant and now, a lot of people say it was a blessing I stuttered, because I never shut up,” he laughed.

McComas learned how to control his breath at HCRI. “Before you begin speaking, you have to speak at the top of a full breath,” he said. “The technique is amazing.”

McComas, who said it took a few years to master his speech after HCRI, has actually given up a little bit of his training.

“Because I like to talk so much and so fast, I have sort of given up a bit of my disfluency so I can talk faster.”

McComas, like most people who stutter, will stammer more if he is very tired, upset or angry. “It’s all based on stress.” After years of practice though, he has learned how to recognize his trigger points, and when he does, he turns his speaking technique up and he slows down.

After his training at HCRI, McComas found confidence in himself. “I’d stand up in front of 50,000 people and give a speech,” he said. “There are some times I am going to stutter a bit. I am going to get tangled up in my words and I’ll have a little disfluency, but you know what? I don’t care.”

Taking flight

When McComas was a little boy, he was obsessed with airplanes and always dreamed of flying. “But I was always like ‘I can’t fly. I’m poor. I stutter. All of these things seem so out of reach.'”

As he got older, McComas learned not to fear his stuttering or be ashamed of it.

“I learned to detach who I am from my stuttering,” he said. That realization helped him on his flight path.

The company where he works (and helped found) — Greenbrier Technical Services, Inc. in Lewisburg — had a company plane, and some of his colleagues encouraged him to get a pilot’s license so he could co-pilot on company trips.

The hardest thing wasn’t learning how to get the plane off the ground, but how to talk on the radio. “In the aviation world, there are specific things you have to say. And one of the favorite techniques of people who stutter is they word substitute,” he said. “You become a walking dictionary.”

Unfortunately, that luxury is not available to McComas when he is in the air. He recalls one time — while training with a flight instructor — that he couldn’t get a specific word out. “I determined that would never happen again.”

And it hasn’t. McComas started flying in 2004 and got his license in 2007. Since then, he has also earned his multi-engine rating, seaplane rating, his tail-wheel endorsement and is working on his glider and instrument ratings.

He even traveled to Alaska last summer and took a bush pilot training course where he learned how to land on glaciers.

McComas has about 250 hours of flight time, with more than 700 landings, usually out of the Greenbrier Valley Airport in his friend’s two-seater Cessna 152.

McComas doesn’t have a plane of his own, but instead flies a Tennessee friend’s plane to keep it in good condition. He and another man keep up with the maintenance and buy fuel for the small plane.

Steering an airplane is like balancing a broom on your hand. Speaking when you stutter is sort of the same thing, McComas said.

“It takes a careful balance of the speech techniques I learned and breathing to speak normally.”

Overcoming his stutter and being a successful pilot was a result of learning a new skill set and learning to think differently to the point that it became second nature.

For now, McComas is happy working in Lewisburg and flying the small two-seater plane. One day, he hopes to head back to school to get a doctorate and teach someplace.

“If I, a poor Appalachian American boy from Lincoln County, West Virginia, can do all that I have done, can fly an airplane in and out of controlled airspace and travel the world — if I can accomplish all that I have … anybody can do it.”

About HCRI

Hollins Communications Research Institute was founded by Ronald L. Webster, Ph.D. in 1972 to investigate stuttering through scientific discovery and treatment innovation. Under Dr. Webster’s direction, Roanoke, Virginia-based HCRI, a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization, has become an international leader in stuttering research and the development of innovative, scientifically based therapy approaches.

The Institute offers 17 stuttering therapy programs annually, each of which lasts 12 days. HCRI clinicians have treated nearly 6,000 people, aged 9 to 73, from across the U.S. and 47 other countries. Clients include broadcaster John Stossel of Fox News; Annie Glenn, wife of Senator and Astronaut John Glenn; as well as athletes, teachers, engineers, students, doctors, military personnel, business professionals, police officers, actors, and others from all walks of life. For more information, visit www.stuttering.org or contact HCRI at 540-265-5650 or admin@stuttering.org.

Few things are more demoralizing than not being able to say your own name without struggling.

One evening as a young reporter covering the crime beat, I was having a particularly hard time managing my stuttering. I struggled on the phone to identify myself as a reporter to the officer on duty. In those days, my throat would sometimes lock up and I would force out sounds in grunts or repetitions. I’d tap my foot or a finger to create a rhythm for my speech. My hands would turn cold and my heart started racing, for I was worried about when a stuttering episode would erupt and how the listeners would react.

“Stop wasting my time,” the officer told me before he hung up. Just as I was about to call back, I heard him over the police scanner laughingly telling officers across the city that someone had called impersonating a reporter. Then he used the police code describing me as someone with mental problems.

I barely made it through that night at work, and while my editor intervened the next day with the police chief, my confidence in my ability to make it as a reporter was nearly shattered.

Today, at 57, I am at peace with my speech. It had been a difficult journey to make it to my first newspaper job, and many other challenges awaited me.

Like other stutterers, I’ve battled ridicule, misunderstanding and misplaced good intentions.

Cultural images of stuttering on television and in movies and songs for the most part are negative or treated as a joke. There’s Porky Pig, for one, and Aunt Clara, the wacky stuttering grandmother witch on the old television show “Bewitched,” too.

After Hollywood released “The King’s Speech,” which handles the stuttering challenges of the late British King George VI sensitively and honestly, it seemed a good time to share my story. Along with other people who stutter, I am excited that this movie, which has won 12 Oscar nominations, is promoting public awareness of this issue.

After that rough night working the cops beat, I considered returning to graduate school in a different field and agonized for weeks. Ultimately, I decided that I was not going to give up on my longtime dream, despite the obstacles of public perception in an industry where speaking is the calling card. Subsequently, I have worked for more than three decades as a journalist, including nearly a decade at The Charlotte Observer and nearly 20 years at The Washington Post.

Stats on stuttering

An estimated 66 million people stutter, with 3 million in the United States. Aristotle and Charles Darwin stuttered, as did actor James Earl Jones and singer Carly Simon.

Speech disruptions range from mild to severe, and usually involve repeating, prolonging or blocking on sounds, syllables or words. Males are three to four times more likely to stutter than females. Nobody knows why.

Researchers don’t know yet what causes stuttering but have determined that it tends to run in families. In my case, relatives on both my father’s and mother’s side of the family stutter. Most stuttering is developmental and starts when children begin to speak. In a study released last year, a federal researcher found what may be three genes linked to stuttering. More investigation is underway.

Always a stutterer

I can’t remember not stuttering.

My parents – and others who grew up hearing myths that have circulated for generations about stuttering – frequently told me as a child to slow down when speaking, though speed is neither the cause nor a cure. A great aunt insisted that I eat with a small silver spoon she gave me.

Over the years, I’ve learned to control my speech, though that doesn’t mean absolute fluency all the time. But before I learned the strategies, I didn’t stutter all the time, either. I’ve had long periods of relatively fluent speech and times when I didn’t talk unless I had to because speaking was just plain exhausting.

It still requires concentration. I have to think about not only what I’m going to say, but how to say it to minimize my stuttering.

I remember in the early 1990s I was one of a group of journalists who had lunch with Nelson Mandela, shortly after the South African leader was released from prison. The night before the gathering and during the hours leading up to it, I rehearsed silently and in front of a mirror what I would say during introductions.

I didn’t want to stutter when I met one of the world’s greatest leaders. On my notepad, I jotted down reminders of what to do to speak smoothly. I took a few deep, slow breaths before I started speaking. It went well.

Many therapies tried

Over the years, I’ve tried several speech therapies. As a young adult, I was taught to speak to the rhythm of a metronome, but that didn’t work and my speech sounded robotic. I used an electronic aid that was strapped around my throat and attached to my ear to mask the sound of my voice when speaking. I turned to hypnosis, with no success.

In 1979, I found a 12-day residential, intensive speech program at Hollins Communications Research Institute in Roanoke, Va. There, I discovered that fluency didn’t have to come randomly anymore. For me, that means concentrating on how I breathe, move my mouth, lips and tongue to form sounds and words.

Most days, I work on these skills through reading or speaking aloud, and annually for more than 15 years I have spent a week every fall with a group of six other stutterers fine-tuning my speaking strategies in the Precision Fluency Shaping Program at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va.

Another test

Years ago, I had to find my way out of the pain and shame of stuttering and its hammering of my self-image. I was thousands of miles away from home, traveling alone through foreign countries when I was finally able to let go of the agony of stuttering.

I found peace with the fact that speaking for me would always be challenging, and decided that I would no longer allow myself to either get annoyed or be insulted by the impatient, sometimes dismissive, reactions stutterers face.

Just a few months ago, I was getting ready to order at a coffee shop with my teenage daughter and a friend. I was distracted and spoke without taking a few moments to get ready.

“I’d like a large d-d-dec-c-caf c-c-coffee,” I said to the woman behind the counter. She paused, looked at me and started chuckling. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. I paused, took a breath, positioned my mouth and tongue to correctly and calmly initiate the words: “This is not a joke.”

She glanced at my daughter and my friend and then back at me, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, as she put the money in the cash register. “I thought you were just messing around.”

I didn’t get angry. Neither was I ashamed.

Mae Israel is a Charlotte freelance writer and editor, blogger of Juggling Act at www.weareblackwomen.com and founder of Unlock A Voice, a nonprofit that offers support services to youth and adults who stutter or have other speech differences. For more info, e-mail unlockavoice@gmail.com .

About HCRI

Hollins Communications Research Institute was founded by Ronald L. Webster, Ph.D. in 1972 to investigate stuttering through scientific discovery and treatment innovation. Under Dr. Webster’s direction, Roanoke, Virginia-based HCRI, a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization, has become an international leader in stuttering research and the development of innovative, scientifically based therapy approaches.

The Institute offers 17 stuttering therapy programs annually, each of which lasts 12 days. HCRI clinicians have treated nearly 6,000 people, aged 9 to 73, from across the U.S. and 47 other countries. Clients include broadcaster John Stossel of Fox News; Annie Glenn, wife of Senator and Astronaut John Glenn; as well as athletes, teachers, engineers, students, doctors, military personnel, business professionals, police officers, actors, and others from all walks of life.

For more information, visit www.stuttering.org or contact HCRI at 540-265-5650 or admin@stuttering.org.