Superhero to the rescue of kids who stutter
A camp that teaches children who stutter to embrace their voices gets a boost from a fellow proud stutterer's charity bike rides
Corey Caporale, 37, spent most of his life hating and hiding his voice. He stutters when he talks, and no amount of well-meaning parental and therapeutic intervention changed that.
"I viewed it as something about myself that I needed to fight and overcome," he says.
But he couldn't.
In 2011, Caporale saw a segment on television about Our Time Theatre, an organisation that taught children who stutter to embrace their voices just the way they are.
He was so intrigued he travelled to New York to attend the group's annual gala, which honoured David Seidler, the screenwriter for the Oscar-winning The King's Speech, whose own stutter shaped his life and work. Also appearing onstage? Dozens of children who stuttered.
"These kids just blow you away," Caporale says. "For me, growing up with no confidence in my voice, to see these kids up in front of a group of hundreds of people - acting, singing, totally confident in themselves - I was hooked."
The group, which has since changed its name to Say: The Stuttering Association for the Young, hosts a sleep-away camp every summer in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Caporale decided to raise money for the camp by riding his bike from his home in Chicago to the camp, 1,159km away.