Man Talks Of Daily Struggle With Stuttering

By Lindsay Guentzel, NewsRadio 830 WCCO

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- That feeling of holding yourself back from finishing the sentence of a person who stutters -- we've all been there. On this National Stuttering Awareness Week, WCCO Radio is doing a five-part series on the communication disorder that affects 70 million people worldwide, three million here in the U.S. alone. Here's Lindsay Guentzel with Part 1 of "Speech Interrupted: The Science of Stuttering."

Hold their eye contact. It's a message Joel Korte repeats every time he speaks.

The 32-year-old from Ramsey adopted the method after a childhood filled with fear and embarrassment over his stutter.

"I don't ever really remember a time where I did not stutter, but I've seen videos of myself when I was, like, 3, and I think even 4 years old where I'm speaking and not stuttering. It's kind of surreal, actually," Korte said.

Across the table at a busy coffee shop, Korte is calm and in control, holding eye contact unlike most people. There are no visible scars from a childhood spent trying to avoid speaking in public.

"I talk to my parents about this sometimes. We don't argue, but they think that it was probably less a part of my childhood than I think. I think it was such a big part of it, Korte said. "I feel like I remember thinking about it all the time and worrying about it all the time."

Korte says as a child he knew the easiest way not to stutter was simply not to speak. He saw a speech pathologist during grade school and hated it, because being pulled out of class meant he was different. In eighth grade he saw a private therapist. While it helped, he said it was always about stopping his stutter, never about living with it.

"As I got older and I started to meet successful people who stutter and I saw that there was a way to manage it, where I didn't have to be afraid of it and it was okay if I stuttered, then it sort of opened up a whole new world of possibilities," Korte said.

Korte says his decision to try and embrace his stutter came when he was 24, a year when he graduated from college and lost his brother in a car accident. He says it was his turning point, and eight years later, the husband, father and business owner has a completely different outlook on something that followed him for two decades.

"You know, I stutter sometimes, but I'm able to say everything I want to say, and communicate all the things I want to communicate. It's just not really a big deal."

Korte says now that he can see his life is moving along just fine with his stutter, he rarely spends any time wishing it would go away.

"I also don't spend much time worrying about trying to manage it, unless I'm having a particularly hard time today," Korte said.