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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.”
One observer of the current Senate race in Louisiana noted that Sen. Bill Cassidy could lose his reelection bid.
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Annie Flanagan for NPR
Sen. Bill Cassidy lost Saturday’s Louisiana Republican primary according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Cassidy, who served two terms in the Senate, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That vote put him at odds with Trump and his MAGA coalition, ultimately leading Trump to push Rep. Julia Letlow to run against Cassidy.
Cassidy’s bid for a third term was viewed as a test of Trump’s grip on the party–and of what voters want from their representatives in Washington. The primary pitted Cassidy, a veteran lawmaker, former physician and chair of the powerful Senate health committee, against Letlow, a political newcomer and a millennial MAGA loyalist.
A detailed view of a hat that reads, Run Julia Run, is seen at a campaign event for Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) on May 6, 2026 in Franklinton, Louisiana.
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A former college administrator, Letlow won a special election in 2021 for the House seat her late husband, Luke, was set to assume before he died from COVID in 2020.
In Congress, Letlow sponsored a bill to collect oral histories from the pandemic and has focused on education and children. She introduced the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would allow parents to review classroom materials like library books and require schools to notify parents if their child requests different pronouns, locker rooms or sports teams.
She also serves on the powerful appropriations committee and has embraced Trump’s agenda.
Letlow, who came first in Saturday’s primary, will face Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming in the runoff on June 27. Cassidy came in third.
The election result is a victory for President Trump who has put Republican loyalty to the test on the ballot so far this year in Indiana state senate primaries and in Cassidy’s race.
Another major test of Trump’s influence comes in Kentucky’s primary on Tuesday when Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who has found himself at odds with the president, faces a challenger endorsed by Trump.
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Brass bands in Beijing make way for sticker shock at home as Trump returns to escalating inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy — with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate.
Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.
Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump’s claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.
“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”
The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters’ concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.
Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes,” as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.
Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be “buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”
“We had an amazing time,” Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.
Inflationary pain is not a factor in how Trump handles Iran
Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.
Asked later about the president’s words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront” while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.
But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.
His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.
“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.
“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.
Democrats see Trump as vulnerable
Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.
“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.
Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, “We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.
Trump’s inflation challenge could get harder
The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.
Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.
“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.
Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.
“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
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