[msb-alumni] Annie Glenn, a Voice for Those Who Struggled to Speak Is Dead at 100 on May 19, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 17:20:16 -0400
BlankAnnie Glenn, a Voice for Those Who Struggled to Speak, Is Dead at 100. By
Neil
Genzlinger.
Being an astronaut's wife thrust her into the spotlight, but a stutter left her
struggling for words until she found help.
Annie Glenn, who in a high-profile life as the wife of John Glenn, the
astronaut and
senator, became an inspiration to many who, like her, stuttered severely,
advocating
on behalf of people with communication disorders of all kinds, died on Tuesday
at a
nursing home near St. Paul, Minn. She was 100. Hank Wilson, director of
communications at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at the Ohio State
University, said the cause was complications of the Covid-19 virus.
Mrs. Glenn, too, was thrust into the national spotlight in 1962, when Mr. Glenn
became the first American to orbit the Earth. At the time, though, speaking or
even
using the telephone was an agony for her because of her stutter.
"I could never get through a whole sentence," she told The New York Times in
1980.
"Sometimes I would open my mouth and nothing would come out."
But in 1973, in her 50's, she decided to address her stuttering by
participating in a
fluency-shaping program developed by Dr. Ronald Webster at Hollins College (now
Hollins University) in Virginia.
"I cannot make telephone calls, so John called and enrolled me," she told The
Boston
Globe in 1975. "The first requirement was to do a taped interview. That
established
the fact that I'm an 85 percent stutterer, which is in the "most severe" range."
She immersed herself in Dr. Webster's intensive, three-week program. By the end
of
it, she said, she could do things that had been beyond her before, like go to a
mall
and comfortably ask a store clerk where to find something.
"Those three weeks, we weren't allowed at all to see our family, or to call, or
anything," she said. "When I called John" at the program's end, she added, "he
cried."
She became a champion for people with speech disorders and an adjunct professor
in
the speech pathology department at Ohio State University's department of speech
and
hearing science. In 1987, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
created an
award in her honor, known as the Annie, presented annually to someone who
demonstrates, as the organization puts it, her "invincible spirit in building
awareness on behalf of those with communication disorders."
"Annie Glenn remains a hero to many of us who in various periods of our lives
couldn't get a word, a thought, or a sentiment past our lips," David M.
Shribman,
executive editor emeritus of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote in February in
The
Boston Globe on the occasion of Mrs. Glenn's 100th birthday. "She fought her
condition, to be sure," Mr. Shribman, a stutterer himself, wrote, "but she also
fought for broad public understanding of stuttering, for the idea that
stutterers
weren't merely shy, weren't unintelligent, weren't social pariahs."
Anna Margaret Castor was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Feb. 17, 1920, to Homer and
Margaret Castor. When she was 3 the family moved to New Concord, Ohio, about 70
miles
east of Columbus, where Mr. Glenn's family lived. She and her future husband
were
childhood playmates.
Mrs. Glenn said she first became self-conscious about her stuttering in the
sixth
grade, when she stood in front of her class to recite.
"I got up to give a poem, and one of the kids laughed," she said in a video
interview
posted on the John Glenn College website. "And I thought, "Uh-oh; I am not like
anybody else in this room."
"I think I was the only stutterer in town at that time," she added.
She graduated from Muskingum College in 1942, majoring in music and education.
She
and Mr. Glenn married in 1943, the same year that he was commissioned in the
Marine
Corps.
As her husband became an American hero, Mrs. Glenn was seen but, necessarily,
not
often heard.
"Our children answered questions when the media would set up at our house," she
recalled in a 1998 interview with The Austin American-Statesman. "I didn't want
to be
interviewed because of my stuttering."
A stutter, she would often explain in later years, affected aspects of life
both
large and small.
"I could never tell jokes like everybody else," she told The Times in 1980.
"John had
to order my meals at restaurants. When I asked for something at a supermarket,
clerks
would snicker at me."
The program at Hollins changed all that.
"People just couldn't believe that I could really talk like I am talking now,"
she
said in the videotape, recalling the reaction of friends and family members.
She went back for a refresher course in 1979, and shortly after made a
half-hour
speech in front of 300 women in Canton, Ohio.
"Our family has shared many first experiences," she said toward the end of the
speech, "but I share with all of you here today another first that means more
than I
can begin to tell you. This is the first full-length speech I have ever given
in my
whole life."
She campaigned for her husband throughout his political career, beginning with
his
first race for the Senate in 1974. He served 24 years representing Ohio. When
Mr.
Glenn made an unsuccessful bid to be the Democratic nominee for president in
1984,
Mrs. Glenn enjoyed being a visible part of his campaign.
"Now I can talk with people, and it is something I have never been able to do
before," she told The Times on the campaign trail in December 1983. "It is like
a
bird being let out of a cage."
Mrs. Glenn served on the advisory boards of numerous child-abuse and speech and
hearing organizations. Her husband died in 2016 at 95.
Mrs. Glenn is survived by two children, John David Glenn and Carolyn Ann Glenn,
and
two grandchildren.
In 1982, a reporter for The Globe asked Mr. Glenn, who was then considering a
presidential run, whether marrying someone with such a severe stutter had given
him
pause.
"That never really made any difference," he said. "I don't know, maybe it was
just
that we grew up together with it, and I knew the person she was and loved the
person
she was, and that was that."
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