Freeing Voices
Changing Lives
Jake Steinfeld, Tina Brown, Catherine Montgomery,
Sir Harold Evans,
Kenyon Martin, Carly Simon (holding her Iceberg
Award)
and Captain Christopher Rynd of the Queen Mary
II
CBS New Anchor
and Managing Editor Katie Couric hosted a star-studded
luncheon on June 10, 2007 for the American
Institute for Stuttering. The luncheon was
held in the glamorous Queens Room of the Queen
Mary II, which was berthed in Red Hook, Brooklyn
preparing to depart at 5PM that day for England.
The expenses for the luncheon were graciously
underwritten by Cunard, the owner of the Queen
Mary II.
The hosts for the
event were Tina Brown, Sir Harold Evans and James
Manley (CEO of Atlantic Pacific Capital). Luncheon
honorees Dominick Dunne, Kenyon Martin, Jake Steinfeld
and Carly Simon were presented with the first
annual "Freeing Voices, Changing Lives Leadership
Awards". Unfortunately Mr. Dunne was unable
to attend because he was otherwise engaged covering
the Phil Spector trial in Los Angeles. (We will
all need to read that issue of Vanity Fair).
Katie Couric, Jim Manley,
Jake Steinfeld and Tina Brown
There was a charming
group of special guests at the luncheon, including:
Candace Bushnell; Lauren Hutton; Henry David Hwang;
Norma Kamali; School Chancellor Joel Klein; Kevin
Kline; Elsa Klensch; Michael Nouri; Austin Pendleton;
Faith Popcorn; Jack & Suzy Welch; Senator
Charles Schumer; Ron Silver; John Stossel; Sam
Waterston; and Jack and Suzy Welch. (Scroll down
for photos.)
Before the luncheon,
I was able to speak briefly with Tina
Brown about her new book, “The Diana
Chronicles,” which has just been published
on the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana’s
death (see the New
York Times Review of the book).
Tina said that
she had lunch with Princess Diana in New York
in July of 1997, a month before she died. But
she had known Princess Diana since they were both
in their twenties in London when Diana was shy
Di and Brown was the editor of The Tattler.
She said that she had researched her book for
a year and the book contained interviews with
some people who spoke publicly about Diana for
the first time, including one of Diana’s
lovers, Teddy Forstmann.
Brown said that
at her last luncheon with the Princess, Diana
said that she wanted her boys to be media savvy
and how she regretted that she would never be
Queen, but being Queen was impossible after the
Martin Bashear interview.
Before and during
the luncheon, the director of the foundation Catherine
Montgomery said that the foundation “treats
the whole person to both speak more easily and
accept themselves. …..many need to recover
from years of shame.” Montgomery said that
[one of her goals] “is to dispel myths about
stuttering, like the myth that the stutterer is
nervous. Stuttering is genetically based and is
a neurological glitch.”
When Sir
Harold Evans (writer, editor, former editor
of The Sunday Times and Tina Brown’s husband)
spoke, he said that he had asked the cruise ship's
captain (Captain Christopher Rynd) if we could
take a quick spin out to sea. "He didn't
say yes, he didn't say no," said Evans. "It's
like my love life!"
Katie
Couric told the gathering that she believed
in paying it forward and she thanked Cunard for
underwriting the event and also thanked them for
underwriting a previous event for Katie’s
favorite charity, the National
Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance. Katie
also spoke about how many famous people have been
afflicted with stuttering including the writer
John Updike who said, “You write because
you don’t talk very well.” She also
spoke about many other famous former stutterers
including: Winston Churchill; Tiger Woods; Carly
Simon; and Bruce Willis.
Katie then presented
the awards which were actually Icebergs, but reassured
us that the band would not start playing “Nearer
My God to Thee.” She said that the Iceberg
signifies the fact that the damage caused by stuttering
is not just to the voice. The voice is just the
tip of the damage that stuttering does to a person.
The Honorees then
spoke.
Fitness
guru Jake Steinfeld told about how he had
difficulty in class when he was asked to read
and that one time he was placed at a table with
two other stutterers and he quipped that it would,
"Take an hour for my table to read a paragraph."
Steinfeld said his life changed at age fourteen
when his father gave him a set of weights. When
he was in his twenties, he moved to Hollywood
where he met people like Harrison Ford, Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Stephen Seagal. He found that
the only difference between his new friends and
the people he had known before is that they [his
new friends] had a dream and they never quit.
NBA
All-Star Kenyon Martin of the Denver Nuggets
said that his stuttering drove him to succeed
in basketball. He also said that he has a four
year old daughter who may have inherited his stuttering
problem and that she is the main challenge of
his life right now.
Singer,
Songwriter and Author Carly Simon told
us that she was the kid in school who would never
raise her hand; the answer was locked in her throat.
Her mother called it her worry lump. When it was
her turn to read in class, she always asked permission
to go to the bathroom. Simon said that the shame
of stuttering and the resulting lack of self esteem
has affected her entire life.
Simon said she
came from a musical family and at the dinner table
her mother told her to tap her foot and say “Pass
the butter” to the rhythm. She told us that
she became an expert at word substitution; she
could not read to her own children [she could
not pronounce certain words] so she made up stories
[so she could use word substitution] and the stories
became musicals.
The event had a
Sunday-lunch-at-the-country-club feel. Everyone
was dressed in their Sunday best and many had
brought their children. Sir Harold Evans and Tina
Brown’s daughter Izzy attended with a large
group of attractive young friends; playwright
David Henry Hwang brought his dauther Eva and
son Noah; and Virginia Cannon and Hendrik Hertzberg
brought their son Wolf. People were having fun,
greeting old friends and catching up on their
week (Sam Waterston and Kevin Kline were observed
talking shop). It was a charming (in-port) outing
on a magnificent ship.
Check out Melinda
MacLean’s photos of the event both below
and on the next page.
