Terry Fator, his Mom Marie, and Terry’s “friends”, Emma Taylor and Winston the Impersonating Turtle
When trying to figure out what to do with your life, Joseph Campbell would tell his students, “Follow your bliss!”
How many Dads or Moms have snuffed out the spark that might illumine a life when they told a son or daughter, forget about it, you can’t make a living at it, and, if you even try, you’re no longer a member of this family?
Yeats said it was a curse to dream things that the world has never seen. But such people enliven the world when they dare to make their dreams a reality. In truth, the curse that we truly suffer is those who refuse to dream at all, for themselves, or for their children. Proverbs say, “When there is no vision, the people perish…” Blinding the young to the possibility of life is a cruel reality that endangers us all.
I was reminded of this sad and certain fact last week in between lectures on DNA alleles and how blood viscosity affects spatter at a forensics conference in Las Vegas.
While there I met Terry Fator, my wife Holly’s cousin. Terry’s now a top headliner at the Mirage Hotel, and a world-renowned ventriloquist, impressionist, singer and comedian, with a five year $100 million performance contract. But Terry, now in his 40s, has fought against a strong headwind since he was 10 years old.
You may have seen Terry on David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey or Larry King.
But it was on “America’s Got Talent” that he got his “big break” when he won a nationally televised contest that gave him a million dollars in prize money – after almost thirty years of church socials, birthday parties, county fairs, menial survival jobs, personal abuse, and, perhaps the most disappointing, a highly disapproving and abusive father who threatened at every turn to make Terry’s dream of fulfilled bliss a nightmare.
Terry always knew he wanted to perform: he appeared in school plays, spoke louder and clearer than his peers, discovered that he could sing, and later that he could sing in the voice of almost any great performing artist, male or female, from Louie Armstrong to Cher.
After discovering ventriloquism in a book at the library, Terry practiced saying the letters of the alphabet without moving his lips while he worked doing janitorial services. Ultimately, he could not only speak but sing without moving his lips.
Finally, Terry had a real gift for writing and delivering a funny line.
But here’s the rub.
From the very beginning, Terry’s father, Jep, abused Terry, making him uncertain that he had any gifts at all, telling him that he couldn’t sing, that he shouldn’t play with these dummies, and that he couldn’t write.
Terry was not, however, going to give up his dream, although he chased unsuccessfully after his father’s approval, in his own words, as Alice chased after the white rabbit in Wonderland.
Luckily, Terry was not entirely alone in his quest. He was sustained in his life’s ambition by his mother Marie and by his siblings, Jep Jr.and Debi.
At his 20th birthday, Marie gave Terry a professional, hand-carved wooden dummy. Terry named him Walter T. Airdale 27 years ago – kept him through various repairs and upgrades – and Walter announced at a performance last week that Holly and I attended that he was the first “manikin American” running for President with the campaign slogan, “nobody puts words in his mouth”
No question Terry pays back and forward. When Terry won the million dollars on “America’s Got Talent,” he confided to his sister that now he could afford the treatment that she needed for her debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. After his brother shared the stage with Terry in various band incarnations before Terry went solo, Jep Jr. became President of Terry Fator Companies. At every performance, Terry honors the military and sets aside contributions that he once could only hope he’d ever be able to give back.
Terry’s Mom, Marie, and her husband, David Sligh, brought us to see Terry in rehearsal, to his show and then to dinner with Terry and Taylor. Taylor performs in Terry’s act and she’s more than that. Terry and Taylor found each other in Las Vegas, fell in love, and now they’re happily married.
A few years ago, Terry wrote a book about his life, that he must have – at least unconsciously – intended as an answer to his Dad’s slanders against his high ambition; it’s titled, “Who’s the Dummy Now?”
Not all young men and women have the resolve and belief in self and can find the support elsewhere among family that allows for success. It’s most offensive therefore when we stifle the dreams of the young who we insist are our legacy.
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