Article from Argus Leader
By the time he was a senior at Humboldt High School, Larry Pressler had lettered three years in basketball and won honors at the state high school oratory contest.
But he never had received any recognition like the kind he got for winning the state title in the American Legion Oratorical Contest in Pierre in 1960.
The former U.S. senator keeps easily accessible the 5½-inch-long clipping from theArgus Leader that proclaims his victory.
“It was the first time I had gotten such recognition,” Pressler says.
His achievement was all the more remarkable when you learn that Pressler had entered high school a little more than three years earlier tormented by speech impediments.
“I had a very severe stammering and stuttering problem when I was growing up. There were no special speech teachers or speech therapists at our school, although I took speech therapy at the University of South Dakota,” he says.
“My freshman year, it was a stammering more than a stuttering. Not because of a bad childhood; some people are just stutterers or stammerers. We had our high school reunion, and some remembered that I was a shy, stuttering, stammering guy. People were astounded. I’m astounded myself.”
Continue reading here.
