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Howard Blatt, stroke survivor who co-founded an aphasia support group, died at 88
Judy and Howie Blatt in 1996.
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In 1983, Howard Blatt was a middle-aged married father working as an electrical engineer at MIT when he collapsed in his kitchen. He’d had a stroke.
That health catastrophe left him with a paralyzed arm and leg, as well as almost total loss of speech. He was diagnosed with aphasia, a brain disorder that can occur after strokes and head injuries, and robs people of their ability to communicate.
Here’s how Blatt, who died May 7 at his home near Boston at age 88, described his post-stroke condition: “No talking — zip. Speech — zip. One incident. Changed life.”
Although he used adaptive devices to overcome some of his physical disabilities, he never fully recovered. And he discovered, to his dismay, that support networks for people with aphasia were a rarity in the early 1980s.
So, with his wife and a small group of other people, Blatt helped create an organization that may be his most important legacy: the Aphasia Community Group, now one of the country’s oldest and largest continuously operating support groups for people with aphasia and their families.
Many of its members say the group — founded in 1990 at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston and now based at Boston University — rescued them from isolation.
It offers an expansive array of services and activities — including concerts, book groups, potluck meals, health information, and technology tips for managing disabilities — as well as companionship for people whose speech was stolen by strokes and other brain injuries.
“You think, oh my God, I am alone,” said Mary Borelli, 61, a former elementary school principal in Massachusetts who was unable to speak after having a stroke at age 47. When she first attended the Aphasia Community Group, “I was like, here are people that understand what I’m going through, and they know how I’m feeling,” she recalled, “and it was a beautiful thing.”
At the group’s meetings, noted Borelli, who speaks haltingly after years of rehabilitative therapy, “Everybody says, ‘Take your time. Take as long as it takes to tell your story,’ and then we all clap for each other. It’s so good.”
Aphasia does not affect intellect, so some aphasia sufferers liken it to living in a prison within their own brain; their minds work, yet they are unable to express themselves or understand spoken or written language. The condition can prevent them from speaking, reading, writing or comprehending, sometimes a combination of those, sometimes all of them. According to the American Stroke Association, at least 2 million people in the U.S. have aphasia, commonly as a result of stroke.
“Aphasia is so isolating,” said another Aphasia Community Group co-founder, Jerry Kaplan, a Boston University speech-language pathologist who has led the organization since its inception. “Newcomers invariably say to me at some point, ‘I thought I was the only one.’”
Thousands of people have attended the group since it began more than three decades ago, and for many of them it “becomes a very important part of their lives,” he added.
“It’s a place that feels safe, feels comfortable,” Kaplan said. “It’s a place where they meet other people who are struggling with the same challenges.”
After Blatt had his stroke at age 48, he and his wife, Judy, quickly recognized the need for a local support network. At the time, there wasn’t even a national group; the National Aphasia Association was founded in 1987, several years after Blatt’s aphasia diagnosis.
“There was nothing when Howie had the stroke,” said Judy, who was then a 46-year-old elementary school teacher with two daughters in college. “Boy, we would have appreciated having something. I mean, we were so young.”
The Aphasia Community Group — part of the Aphasia Resource Center at Boston University’s Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences — draws people of all ages. Its members live mainly in New England, but during the coronavirus pandemic its meetings shifted to Zoom, allowing people around the country to dial in and join.
Many of its attendees considered Blatt an inspirational figure, thanks to his eclectic range of post-stroke accomplishments. Known widely as Howie, he was not able to return to his job as a computer hardware designer at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories after his stroke, but he worked methodically to regain as much function as possible.
A drawing made for the Blatts by one of their two daughters, Julia Blatt, for their 40th wedding anniversary.
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He progressed from a wheelchair to a metal brace to a plastic leg support. He did extensive physical, occupational and speech therapy. He re-earned his driver’s license, then drove cross-country by himself multiple times, documenting his trips with copious photographs. He dabbled in sculpting and designed additions to his house.
“He built a table, he built closets, he built cabinets,” Judy Blatt, now 87, recalled. “He figured out how he could do it with one hand.”
He studied grammar to try to improve his speech, treating English as a foreign language to be re-learned. He also created a newsletter called The Aphasia Advocate.
Throughout his rehab, Blatt documented his work in binders, assigning grades to himself. Immediately after his stroke, he gave himself flunking scores in all categories. Eventually, his grades improved, and he even earned an occasional A.
Over the decades, he was a faithful member of the Aphasia Community Group, as was Judy, his wife of 64 years.
When Borelli, the former school principal, began attending its meetings and met Blatt, she thought: “I want to be like Howie,” she recalled.
“I think Howie was the example of what you could do with all the loss he had,” said Judy Blatt. “He was sort of a model.”
Other group members, she added, “could look at Howie and see what you could actually do, because he had done it.”
The Aphasia Community Group, which will celebrate its 35th anniversary next year, is one of Blatt’s most enduring achievements, and “for folks that have stayed with it for many years, it became a family,” Kaplan said.
“This was a tenacious man who was really given a tough break in midlife, with young children, at the top of his game in his profession, and his communication gifts were largely wiped out,” Kaplan said of Blatt. “But he did not give in to this for 40-plus years. And not only did he survive; he thrived.”
Former president Bill Clinton is scheduled to give deposition Friday to a congressional committee investigating his links to Jeffrey Epstein, one day after Hillary Clinton testified before the committee and called the proceedings “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people”.
During remarks before the House oversight committee, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, insisted on Thursday that she had never met Epstein.
The former Democratic president, however, flew on Epstein’s private jet several times in the early 2000s but said he never visited his island.
Clinton, who engaged in an extramarital affair while president and has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women, also appears in a photo from the recently released files, in a hot tub with Epstein and a woman whose identity is redacted.
Clinton has denied the sexual misconduct claims and was not charged with any crimes. He also has not been accused of any wrongdoing connected to Epstein.
Epstein visited the White House at least 17 times during the early years of Clinton’s presidency, according to White House visitor records cited in news reports. Clinton said he cut ties with him around 2005, before the disgraced financier, who died from suicide in 2019, pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in Florida.
The House committee subpoenaed the Clintons in August. They initially refused to testify but agreed after Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt.
The Clintons asked for their depositions to be held publicly, with the former president stating that to do so behind closed doors would amount to a “kangaroo court”.
“Let’s stop the games + do this the right way: in a public hearing,” Clinton said on X earlier this month.
The committee’s chair, James Comer, did not grant their request, and the proceedings will be conducted behind closed doors with video to be released later.
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton’s proceedings were briefly halted after representative Lauren Boebert leaked an image of Clinton testifying.
During the full day deposition, Clinton said she had no information about Epstein and did not recall ever meeting him.
Before the deposition, Comer said it would be a long interview and that one with Bill Clinton would be “even longer”.
CASE 0:26-cv-00107-PJS-DLM
Doc. 12-1 Filed 02/26/26
Page 5 of 17
and to file a status update by 11:00 am on January 20. ECF No. 5. Respondents never provided a bond hearing and did not release Petitioner until January 21, ECF Nos. 10, 12, after failing to file an update, ECF No. 9. Further, Respondents released Petitioner subject to conditions despite the Court’s release order not providing for conditions. ECF Nos. 5, 12–13.
Abdi W. v. Trump, et al., Case No. 26-CV-00208 (KMM/SGE)
On January 21, 2026, the Court ordered Respondents, within 3 days, to either (a) complete Petitioner’s inspection and examination and file a notice confirming completion, or (b) release Petitioner immediately in Minnesota and confirm the date, time, and location of release. ECF No. 7. No notice was ever filed. The Court emailed counsel on January 27, 2026, at 10:39 am. No response was provided.
Adriana M.Y.M. v. David Easterwood, et al., Case No. 26-CV-213 (JWB/JFD)
On January 24, 2026, the Court ordered immediate release in Minnesota and ordered Respondents to confirm the time, date, and location of release, or anticipated release, within 48 hours. ECF No. 12. Respondent was not released until January 30, and Respondents never disclosed the time of release, instead describing it as “early this morning.” ECF No. 16.
Estefany J.S. v. Bondi, Case No. 26-CV-216 (JWB/SGE)
On January 13, 2026, at 10:59 am, the Court ordered Respondents to file a letter by 4:00 pm confirming Petitioner’s current location. ECF No. 8. After receiving no response, the Court ordered Respondents, at 5:11 pm, to immediately confirm Petitioner’s location and, by noon on January 14, file a memorandum explaining their failure to comply with the initial order. ECF No. 9. Respondents did not file the memorandum, requiring the Court to issue another order. ECF No. 12. On January 15, the Court ordered immediate release in Minnesota and required Respondents to confirm the time, date, and location of release within 48 hours. ECF No. 18. On January 20, having received no confirmation, the Court ordered Respondents to comply immediately. ECF No. 21. Respondents informed the Court that Petitioner was released in Minnesota on January 17, but did not specify the time. ECF No. 22.
5
James Hickman holds a photo montage of the late Rev. Jesse Jackson before a public visitation at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago on Thursday.
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CHICAGO — A line of mourners streamed through a Chicago auditorium Thursday to pay final respects to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. as cross-country memorial services began in the city the late civil rights leader called home.
The protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate will lie in repose for two days at the headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition before events in Washington, D.C., and South Carolina, where he was born.
Family members wiped away tears as the casket was brought into the stately brick building. Flowers lined the sidewalks where people waiting to enter watched a large screen playing video excerpts of Jackson’s notable speeches. Some raised their fists in solidarity.
The casket with the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrives before a public visitation at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago on Thursday.
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Inside, Jackson’s children, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Rev. Al Sharpton were among those who stood by the open casket to shake hands and hug those coming to view the body of Jackson, dressed in a suit and blue shirt and tie.
“The challenge for us is that we’ve got to make sure that all he lived for was not in vain,” Sharpton told reporters. “Dr. King’s dream and Jesse Jackson’s mission now falls on our shoulders. We’ve got to stand up and keep it going.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton speaks as Jesse Jackson Jr. listens after the public visitation for the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago on Thursday.
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Jackson died last week at age 84 after battling a rare neurological disorder that affected his mobility and ability to speak in his later years.
Remembrances have already poured in from around the globe, and several U.S. states, including Minnesota, Iowa and North Carolina, are flying flags at half-staff in his honor.
But perhaps nowhere has his death been felt as strongly as in the nation’s third-largest city, where Jackson lived for decades and raised his six children, including a son who is a congressman.
Bouquets have been left outside the family’s Tudor-style home on the city’s South Side for days. Public schools have offered condolences, and city trains have used digital screens to display Jackson’s portrait and his well-known mantra, “I am Somebody!”
People wait to enter the security checkpoint for the public visitation for the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago on Thursday.
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His causes, both in the United States and abroad, were countless: Advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues including voting rights, job opportunities, education and health care. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, he channeled cries for Black pride and self-determination into corporate boardrooms, pressuring executives to make America a more open and equitable society.
“We honor him, and his hard-earned legacy as a freedom fighter, philosopher, and faithful shepherd of his family and community here in Chicago,” the mayor said in a statement.
Next week, Jackson will lie in honor at the South Carolina Statehouse, followed by public services. According to Rainbow PUSH’s agenda, Gov. Henry McMaster is expected to deliver remarks; however, the governor’s office said Thursday that his participation wasn’t yet confirmed. Jackson spent his childhood and started his activism in South Carolina.
Details on services in Washington have not yet been made public. However, he will not lie in honor at the United States Capitol rotunda after a request for the commemoration was denied by the House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.
The two weeks of events will wrap up next week with a large celebration of life gathering at a Chicago megachurch and finally, homegoing services at the headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Family members said the services will be open to all.
“Our family is overwhelmed and overjoyed by the amazing amount of support being offered by common, ordinary people who our father’s life has come into contact with,” his eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., said before the services began. “This is a unique opportunity to lay down some of the political rhetoric and to lay down some of the division that deeply divides our country and to reflect upon a man who brought people together.”
The family of the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrives as Yusep Jackson wipes his eyes before public visitation at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago on Thursday.
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The services included prayers from some of the city’s most well-known religious leaders, including Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich. Mourners of all ages — from toddlers in strollers to elderly people in wheelchairs — came to pay respects.
Video clips of his appearances at news conferences, the campaign trail and even “Sesame Street” also played inside the auditorium.
Claudette Redic, a retiree who lives in Chicago, said her family has respected Jackson, from backing his presidential ambitions to her son getting a scholarship from a program Jackson championed.
“We have generations of support,” she said. “I’m hoping we continue.”
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