Joe Tillman

Joe Tillman was born August 16, 1996 in a small town in North Carolina while his mother, Rebecca, was in the Coast Guard and his father, Daniel, in the Navy. Rebecca was search and rescue aircrew and a helicopter mechanic. Daniel was a steelworker in the Seabees. Joe became a hero's hero at nearly 3 years of age, when he saved the lives of his entire family, as an intruder with a knife entered their home. The intruder grabbed Joe and tried to cut him with the knife but he managed to pull away from him, run into his parent's bedroom, wake them up, tell them about the intruder, in spite of his severe speech problem, which made it almost impossible to understand anything he said. His father, by some miracle, understood him and interpreted for his mother. Rebecca, having been declared a hero herself by public resolution for one of her search and rescue cases, awarded Joe her highest medal for his demonstration of bravery in saving the lives of his family. The ensuing years brought a lot of frustration for Joe as he struggled with a speech problem so great that no one understood him but Cali and Katlyn, and then only sometimes. They often interpreted for him. Rebecca sought speech therapy evaluation for Joe only to have their insurance company turn down their request for therapy. Determined to help her son, she created speech therapy games and paid Joe a dollar each time he participated. Within a year, his speech had improved by 60 percent. Within two years, he only had trouble with two combination sounds. Things again would not be so easy for Joe, as he had to endure two full sets of braces to fix the extreme gaps between his teeth. At times, the braces improved his speech even more and at times he lost a lot of progress. It was a real roller coaster ride with his speech as his orthodontic treatment proceeded. Because of his past struggles with his speech, Joe's ability to read was delayed. He refused his mother's help teaching him to read and taught himself how to read, instead. He then sharpened his reading abilities in his acting classes 5 times a week, by reading a lot of monologues and scripts. Joe has taken an interest in the environment and often advises his parents on ways to take better care of it. He also donates part of his earnings to charitable causes including those that help endangered animals. Joe is home schooled, which his mother credits for preserving his self confidence and self esteem, in the face of all the obstacles he has had to overcome. He is a brown belt in karate and second level gymnast. He enjoys making films, himself, as a member of a kid's filmmaking club and he has an extensive Poke' man collection.