Nothing is more important to Nantucket District Court Clerk Magistrate Don Hart than his family. When his daughter Megan was struggling with a stutter growing up, Hart wanted to do whatever he could to help her get the assistance she needed to overcome it.
“She was a young girl who couldn’t even finish two sentences without stuttering,” he said.
Eventually Hart discovered a three-week mind and body fluency program at Emerson College overseen by Adriana DeGrande, a licensed speech language pathologist. The program focused on helping severe stutterers not only overcome their stutter but also emotionally deal with it moving forward in their lives. By the end of the three-week program Hart said his daughter’s improvement was so remarkable it inspired him to begin the Hart Speech Foundation, which is now in its 10th year.
“At the end of the three weeks each client has to get up, give a 10-12 minute speech about the program, what they took out of it, and how it has affected their ability to speak,” Hart said. “They give it in front of a lot of people they don’t know. It is an incredible thing to see. The first time I saw it was when (Megan) did it. By the time she finished the three week program she was able to give a 12 minute speech without stuttering once. It was probably, honestly and truly, the most emotional day of my life. It is amazing. She was 13 or 14 years old at the time.”
Hart said it was at that moment where he took a glance around at all of the kids in need of the program and wanted to help others get the same help. Getting his daughter’s school system to pay for the program was a challenge, he said, and one he may not have been able to overcome if it weren’t for his background in law.
“Most insurances don’t cover intensive speech therapy so we were fortunate that I was able to convince my daughter’s school system to pay for the therapy because for most people (schools) don’t want to pay it,” he said. “When I first started the foundation I would call the schools. I would convince them to pay for the therapy for kids because under chapter 766, each child with a disability or special needs goes on a special education plan. Well, stuttering is considered a disability under the ADA (American Disabilities Act). Once they go on an education plan, the school has determined that this child has a need. So the school has to meet that need and if they can’t, they have to provide funding so the child can have their needs met. That is how I would argue with the schools.”
Hart hosted his foundation’s 10th annual golf tournament at Pine Hills Golf Club on Monday in Plymouth. The event had 116 golfers, the most ever for any of Hart’s golf tournaments. The tournament raised $50,000, which will be used towards providing scholarships for severe stutterers to attend intensive speech therapy and to help students pay for college who are planning to become clinicians with a focus on stuttering.
“The program is $4,000 so it isn’t cheap,” Hart said. “For the ones where we couldn’t convince the schools to pay, we would donate at least $2,000 towards each student’s therapy. For those with an extreme need who can’t pay for it at all, we have paid full tuition for those folks. This is something very important to myself and my family. What is the most basic human function we have? It is to communicate. So if you can’t communicate you can’t have effective relationships or anything. Being able to communicate and being more fluent is critical.”
Hart added that the number of clinicians with a focus on stuttering is scarce in the country
“In the United States right now there are less than 150 clinicians who specialize specifically in stuttering,” he said. “In Massachusetts there are maybe 12 who specialize in stuttering. So what we want to do is provide scholarships to students that are looking to specialize in stuttering to ensure there continues to be people doing this and helping out the stuttering community.”
Hart said his foundation is working with a graphic designer to create brochures that will be sent to pediatricians. Hart said once these brochures are created and sent out to pediatrician’s offices, these pediatricians can reach out to his foundation, bring a stuttering child to The Hart Foundation’s attention, and they can work together to get the child the help they need.
“The stutter will resolve in 80 percent of the cases so it is the 20 percent that won’t resolve we want to reach,” he said. ““Say you are a parent with a four or five year old child who stutters and the doctor says ‘well the stuttering will stop on its own.’ Well 80 percent of the time they are right, but it is the 20 percent where they aren’t right about that we want to reach and identify.”
“If you can reach a child by the time they are four or five years old and get them into an intensive speech therapy program, you can eradicate the stuttering completely. The reason that happens is because the child hasn’t developed any bad speech habits yet. A trained clinician can spot a child at that age who is going to be a lifelong stutterer. There are things they look at like family history, secondary characteristics, stuff like that. So if we can have pediatricians contacting us we will put them in touch with a clinician in their area who can work with them to stop the stuttering.”
Hart said the program his daughter enrolled in essentially teaches kids how to speak again, breaking words and phrases down into two-second syllables, followed by one second syllables until they can start speaking in a more natural speaking pattern.
“Once they do that they take the clients out to Boston Common and have them do surveys,” he said. “They walk up to folks in the common and ask questions using their new speech pattern. From there they go into stores, say Macy’s or any store downtown, and have them ask for products. The final phase (before the speech) is that they do telephone calls and call different stores asking things like when are you open until, when will you have this or that item in stock, stuff like that. They find that one of the hardest things for a stutterer to do is speak on the phone because there is no eye contact. They can’t see who they are talking to so they can’t gauge how their conversation is going. The phone piece is very critical even though it doesn’t sound like something anyone would ever be concerned about.”
Money was also raised from items that were auctioned off at Hart’s golf tournament during the dinner. The items were primarily sports memorabilia including signed pictures of Boston Bruins legend Bobby Orr and Celtics legend Larry Bird. Each golfer also received a polo shirt with Hart Speech Foundation stitched on the short sleeve and had their name entered into a raffle for a weekend on Nantucket.
“The Nantucket Hotel donated a two-night stay, Affordable Rentals donated a two-day Jeep rental,” Hart said. “The Hy-Line donated two round-trip tickets. We also received donations from the Seagrille, Bar Yoshi, and Pudley’s Pub. We got two tickets to the Dreamland and coupons from Aunt Leah’s Fudge.”
The event registration began at 11 am but golfers began arriving at 10:30 am to take hacks at the driving range in anticipation for the event. The teams of four played from 12-5 pm and the award dinner, raffle, and silent auction began at 5:15 pm.
“It was just a fun day,” he said. “The weather was perfect. It was 70 degrees in October I mean, you can’t ask for better weather. It was sunny. The course was playing really well and the fairways were fast.”
The tournament also included a hole-in-one contest sponsored by Tufankjian Family Dealerships where golfers had an opportunity to win a Honda Civic if they hit a hole-in-one. Hart said he is hopeful events like this will help his foundation grow and raise more funds to help take steps towards a world where all children have access to intensive speech programs at a young age.
“Imagine what a different pedagogical experience it would be if a child went to school, could speak fluently, and not be bullied or picked on for their stutter,” he said. “It is horrible. When I review applications for the scholarships that is a key thing in just about every scholarship application I receive.”
To learn more about the foundation or to donate, you can follow this link.
