The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 5: Breaking The Silence

Episode Date: March 1, 2016

He found his voice and defined a generation. And he owes it all to a little piece of fruit. 

This is the way I heard it. When Donald Crouch first encountered Jim in his English class, the aging teacher found a sullen, 14-year-old boy deep in a cocoon of self-imposed silence. Donald might have assumed that Jim was bored or disinterested or maybe even backward. Certainly, he appeared to be all of those things. But there was something in the young boy that lit up whenever the subject turned to poetry. It was subtle, but Donald could see a shift in the boy's posture. A quiet but unmistakable enthusiasm that accompanied any discussion of Tennyson or Shakespeare or Chaucer.

One day, Donald kept Jim after school and tried to reach the boy behind the stony facade. The problem was soon made clear. Jim stuttered. Not a little, a lot. Donald listened patiently as Jim tried to articulate the humiliation he lived with all of his life. Through the stammering and sputtering, Donald saw that Jim had turned to the written word because the spoken word had alluded him. The next day, Donald instructed his English class to write an original poem. The topic didn't matter, as long as it was something they felt passionate about.

And that is where fate stepped in, as fate often does, this time in the form of a ruby red grapefruit. During the Depression, ricketts and scurvy were a public health issue in Michigan. So the government sent tons of vitamin C up from Florida to help combat the problem. Earlier that week, a welfare worker had delivered a crate full of grapefruit to Jim's home, and Jim had very nearly swallowed his tongue with delight. It was the most incredible, delectable, mouth-watering food he'd ever tasted. That night, Jim wrote, owed to a grapefruit, a flowery homage to Epicurean bliss, brought to life by the full, juicy

luxury of eating citrus in the dead of a Michigan winter. Jim submitted his poem the next day, and Donald was stunned by how good it was. So he decided to do something most teachers today would never consider. He decided to put Jim on the spot. Donald had noticed earlier that Jim's stutter vanished when he quoted his favorite poets. So later that week, as he returned their assignments with grades and comments attached, Donald addressed the class. I've read your poems and for the most part I'm pleased, he said. Some are quite good. Several are excellent, and one is extraordinary. Jim, would you kindly come to the front of the class and read us what you've written? Jim sat frozen in his seat as the

The blood rushed to his face, and the other students stared. Why would his teacher ask him to do such a thing? Jim had trusted Mr. Crouch, and now he felt betrayed. Then Mr. Crouch said, Jim, I think your poem is too good to be true. Frankly, I don't think you wrote it. Practically speaking, Jim may have been mute, but his hearing was excellent and he could not believe his ears. Mr. Crouch was accusing him of plagiarism? Now Jim was angry.

If the words are really yours, Jim, prove it. Stand and recite them. Right now. Or admit you stole them. Jim sprung to his feet and recited, owed to a grapefruit, just as he had written it. There was anger in his voice, but what a voice it was. Big and booming. And clear as a bell.

That was the day Jim learned he didn't stutter when he recited. The same day that Donald did. Crouch unlocked one of the most familiar voices in the world. As Robert Frost put it, Way leads on to Way, and Jim's way was suddenly clear. Jim became a master at memorization, reciting poetry aloud evolved into joining the debate class. That led to the theater. Eventually, his newfound vocal prowess took him all the way to Broadway, where he was cast as the lead in a production of Shakespeare's, Othello. A part he memorized. with no problem at all.

A Tony Award followed. Then an Emmy. Then an honorary Oscar. The world, it seemed, was too small to contain a voice as big as Jim's biggest Jim's, so Jim took on the galaxy. A galaxy far, far away. That is how the voice of Darth Vader was coaxed from the body of James Earl Jones, an immensely talented performer,

who would likely still be a silent observer of the world around him, But for an extraordinary teacher who understood the power of the spoken word and the unexpected arrival of a ruby red grapefruit that tasted too good to be true. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.