Maverick
06-02-2004, 09:45 AM
Speech challenge proves to be no impediment to success
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Terry Oblander
Plain Dealer Reporter
Medina- When Norbert "Nobby" Lewandowski set goals for his life, it didn't occur to him that his stuttering would prevent him from making a million, getting a hole-in-one or meeting someone new each day.
And stuttering was not about to stop him from being a motivational speaker after he sold his accounting firm, he said.
"Only in America could you be a paid public speaker with a speech impediment," Lewandowski said.
About 35 times a year, the 67-year-old Medina Township man speaks to professional groups, fraternal organizations and chambers of commerce about business ethics, business morality and the value of a man's word. They pay him as much as $3,500.
He asks audiences to listen to what he says, not how he says it.
Lewandowski pulls out toy instruments and invites members of audiences to help him with a tune the Beach Boys could have written for a stuttering choir.
"Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann," he sings, planting smiles on the faces of his audience.
Four years ago, Lewandowski invited Kent State University junior Jody Regano and other business majors to help him sing the song during a speech at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. His speech inspired her. "I'll remember that for the rest of my life," Regano said.
Regano was born with Bell's palsy, which caused a paralysis on the left side of her face. She said she had to endure lots of childhood taunts - just as Lewandowski did with his stuttering.
Today, Regano is the manager of the Richmond Heights branch of Fifth Third bank.
She said Lewandowski's speech helped her shape her view about herself and others. "Everybody has something they would like to change," she said. "Ours is just a little more obvious."
Thirty-five years earlier, Lewandowski was having another life-changing conversation.
It was April 1965 when the young accountant was called into the boss's office and fired. Lewandowski said the boss told him he did great work but needed to find a job with another firm where his stuttering wouldn't get in the way.
The timing was awful. Lewandowski and his wife were expecting their second child. His wife gave her unemployed husband a self-help book, which recommended setting goals and writing them down.
He began a list that would grow.
Although he never saw a Mercedes when he was growing up in Cleveland's Slavic Village, Lewandowski was determined to get the luxury car that he now parks behind the office building he built in Medina Township.
Lewandowski made his hole-in-one using a sand wedge on a 130-yard hole on Aug. 6, 1987, at the Medina Country Club.
He still chases the goal of meeting someone new each day. Lewandowski said this has become almost a religion for him, and he has stopped total strangers late in the day and introduced himself just to keep the promise to himself.
Lewandowski didn't stay angry with the boss who fired him. He just went out, got experience and started an accounting firm, Lewandowski Zalick & Co.
After his first million-dollar year (another goal), Nobby sent his ex-boss a copy of his income tax return. The ex-boss sent him a congratulatory note.
Lewandowski said he believes that stuttering has shaped his life because he had to work harder to succeed.
"As a CPA, I had to be better than everyone else because I have a speech impediment," he said.
Lewandowski jokes that he made more money as a stuttering accountant because accountants charge by the hour.
As a young man, football and baseball built his confidence. He was Nobby the pitcher, not Nobby the pitcher who stutters.
"If you don't fit in, people are brutal," he said. "That's one of the reasons, I believe, I was a good athlete."
His father, Zan, taught him to pitch and helped him develop the control to hit any spot over the plate, which helped when batters mocked him. "Back then, if the opposition gave it to you, you put it in his ear," Lewandowski said.
He was a standout football and baseball player at Benedictine High School. He graduated from there in 1955.
He was awarded the first baseball scholarship at Kent State University and later played for three years in the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor league system.
As he neared retirement in 1992, Lewandowski began giving back to the communities that had been good to him.
From 1991 to 2000, Lewandowski was a member of the board of trustees at Kent State University, where he has established an endowment for the baseball program and a scholarship for accounting students.
He and businessman Jack Holland decided 10 years ago to start an endowment fund that would make grants to other charitable organizations. Today, the Medina County Fund has grown to over $1 million.
Lewandowski said he prefers to dwell on the good. He has no time for anger or anxiety.
"What value is there in harboring anger against anyone today?" he asks. "We are here on earth only once. That's what matters. You have to get your head out of the sand and make the best of this life."
Lewandowski is convinced he would not be the same man today if he didn't stutter.
"I'm not sure I would have been driven as much as I have been," he said. "I'm not sure I wouldn't have wound up working in a factory on Harvard Avenue or something." But Lewandowski admits he would have chosen a life without stuttering if he had been given that choice.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/medina/1086082317114020.xml
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Terry Oblander
Plain Dealer Reporter
Medina- When Norbert "Nobby" Lewandowski set goals for his life, it didn't occur to him that his stuttering would prevent him from making a million, getting a hole-in-one or meeting someone new each day.
And stuttering was not about to stop him from being a motivational speaker after he sold his accounting firm, he said.
"Only in America could you be a paid public speaker with a speech impediment," Lewandowski said.
About 35 times a year, the 67-year-old Medina Township man speaks to professional groups, fraternal organizations and chambers of commerce about business ethics, business morality and the value of a man's word. They pay him as much as $3,500.
He asks audiences to listen to what he says, not how he says it.
Lewandowski pulls out toy instruments and invites members of audiences to help him with a tune the Beach Boys could have written for a stuttering choir.
"Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann," he sings, planting smiles on the faces of his audience.
Four years ago, Lewandowski invited Kent State University junior Jody Regano and other business majors to help him sing the song during a speech at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. His speech inspired her. "I'll remember that for the rest of my life," Regano said.
Regano was born with Bell's palsy, which caused a paralysis on the left side of her face. She said she had to endure lots of childhood taunts - just as Lewandowski did with his stuttering.
Today, Regano is the manager of the Richmond Heights branch of Fifth Third bank.
She said Lewandowski's speech helped her shape her view about herself and others. "Everybody has something they would like to change," she said. "Ours is just a little more obvious."
Thirty-five years earlier, Lewandowski was having another life-changing conversation.
It was April 1965 when the young accountant was called into the boss's office and fired. Lewandowski said the boss told him he did great work but needed to find a job with another firm where his stuttering wouldn't get in the way.
The timing was awful. Lewandowski and his wife were expecting their second child. His wife gave her unemployed husband a self-help book, which recommended setting goals and writing them down.
He began a list that would grow.
Although he never saw a Mercedes when he was growing up in Cleveland's Slavic Village, Lewandowski was determined to get the luxury car that he now parks behind the office building he built in Medina Township.
Lewandowski made his hole-in-one using a sand wedge on a 130-yard hole on Aug. 6, 1987, at the Medina Country Club.
He still chases the goal of meeting someone new each day. Lewandowski said this has become almost a religion for him, and he has stopped total strangers late in the day and introduced himself just to keep the promise to himself.
Lewandowski didn't stay angry with the boss who fired him. He just went out, got experience and started an accounting firm, Lewandowski Zalick & Co.
After his first million-dollar year (another goal), Nobby sent his ex-boss a copy of his income tax return. The ex-boss sent him a congratulatory note.
Lewandowski said he believes that stuttering has shaped his life because he had to work harder to succeed.
"As a CPA, I had to be better than everyone else because I have a speech impediment," he said.
Lewandowski jokes that he made more money as a stuttering accountant because accountants charge by the hour.
As a young man, football and baseball built his confidence. He was Nobby the pitcher, not Nobby the pitcher who stutters.
"If you don't fit in, people are brutal," he said. "That's one of the reasons, I believe, I was a good athlete."
His father, Zan, taught him to pitch and helped him develop the control to hit any spot over the plate, which helped when batters mocked him. "Back then, if the opposition gave it to you, you put it in his ear," Lewandowski said.
He was a standout football and baseball player at Benedictine High School. He graduated from there in 1955.
He was awarded the first baseball scholarship at Kent State University and later played for three years in the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor league system.
As he neared retirement in 1992, Lewandowski began giving back to the communities that had been good to him.
From 1991 to 2000, Lewandowski was a member of the board of trustees at Kent State University, where he has established an endowment for the baseball program and a scholarship for accounting students.
He and businessman Jack Holland decided 10 years ago to start an endowment fund that would make grants to other charitable organizations. Today, the Medina County Fund has grown to over $1 million.
Lewandowski said he prefers to dwell on the good. He has no time for anger or anxiety.
"What value is there in harboring anger against anyone today?" he asks. "We are here on earth only once. That's what matters. You have to get your head out of the sand and make the best of this life."
Lewandowski is convinced he would not be the same man today if he didn't stutter.
"I'm not sure I would have been driven as much as I have been," he said. "I'm not sure I wouldn't have wound up working in a factory on Harvard Avenue or something." But Lewandowski admits he would have chosen a life without stuttering if he had been given that choice.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/medina/1086082317114020.xml