Circa 2003
Imagine beaming lights, intrusive cameras and the roaring applause of fans. Imagine the anticipation, the butterflies Lin your stomach and the racing thoughts reminding you to hit the right mark. Imagine going onstage to sing and dance in front of a live television audience, competing for the opportunity of a lifetime. Imagine beating out seventy thou sand other talented, determined and driven contestants to become a finalist on the hit reality television show American Idol. Imagine the experience. Imagine being Clay Aiken.
American Idol consists of an 18 week competition among contestants selected from auditions held across the country. Flown out to Hollywood, finalists vie for a chance at a prize of $1 million and a recording contract. By process of elimination, participants are voted off each week by home viewers that call in to cast their vote. Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson comprise the panel of three judges who lavish their kudos or criticisms on the individual performances.
In a day of reality-show instant celebrities, still only a select few know the exhilarating adventure of being plucked out of anonymity and thrown into the proverbial fishbowl of super-stardom. These men and women are members of a club that share the virtues of grit, determination and raw talent. Membership in this club grants fame, fortune and opportunity, and to each of these Aiken is now privy.
For weeks Aiken sang, danced and withstood tremendous disparagement from the show’s most critical judge, Simon Cowell. Despite Cowell’s criticism of his non pop star image, Aiken’s success is a nod that true talent still prevails. With a change of hair color and a few minor wardrobe adjustments, Aiken has morphed into a real-life pop star. While Aiken may have acquiesced to a few minor alterations, he has stayed true to himself and his passion, using the stage of American Idol as a plat form to raise awareness and money for children with disabilities.
In 1978, Clayton Aiken was born thousands of miles. from Tinseltown in Raleigh, North Carolina. By age three, his talent and love of performing had become apparent. Standing on carpet samples at the local Sears where his mother worked, Aiken would sing for the reward of a dollar per song. As a child, his musical inspirations came from listening to country radio stations. The first single he ever bought was “Meet Me in Montana” by Marie Osmond. Aiken later sang in the Raleigh Boys Choir and appeared in high school pro ductions of Oklahoma! and The Music Man. Soon thereafter he did a dinner theatre stint of The Sound of Music. It was not long after graduating from high school that Aiken discovered he had a talent for more than singing and acting-he loved to teach.
North Carolina has one of the most progressive programs in the country for teaching children with developmental disabilities, known as the Community Alternatives Program for persons with mental retardation/developmental disabilities (CAP MR/DD). While Aiken was working for CAP, one of his students, Mike Bubel, relentlessly encouraged him to audition for American Idol. In appreciation for Bubel’s faith in him. Aiken has set up the Bubel-Aiken Foundation, which breaks down the barriers that prevent families from obtaining the ser vices and financial assistance they need. The Bubel Aiken Foundation will also focus on the integration and full inclusion of people with developmental disabilities in educational, employment and recreational settings.
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Prior to competing in American Idol. Aiken’s career goals had nothing to do with entertaining. “I decided to study special education and fell in love with working with individuals with autism. That’s what I planned to do with my life,” he explained. In fact, Aiken envisioned himself as a high school principal by age 50. The transition in goals from high school principal to pop star is a radical contrast.
These days Aiken is enjoying phenomenal success after touring with American Idols Live! His album, Measure of a Man, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts and he made a historical debut with his single, “This Is the Night,” which also charted No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100-an accomplishment which hasn’t been done since Elton John’s tribute to Princess Diana, “Candle in the Wind, 1997.”
ABILITY‘s Chet Cooper and Jennifer Melendres recently sat down with Clay Aiken and discussed his sudden success and the future of the Bubel-Aiken Foundation.
Chet Cooper: I had an opportunity to view your schedule and you’re doing one interview after another. How are you holding up?
Clay Aiken: I’m pretty used to it at this point. I haven’t even seen a schedule for today. I don’t know what I’m doing. (laughs) I sometimes think I might be autistic because I like to know-I need to know-my begin nings and my ends. I don’t have to be in control of it. but I need to know what’s going on.
CC: You’re scheduled to be taping several shows. How do you feel about being in the spotlight?
CA: People always say, “You’re going to be on TV tomorrow. How do you feel?” I was on TV for almost sixteen weeks during American Idol. It’s at the point now where it’s old. I’ve done shows, local shows especially, and they’ll say, “This is the microphone and I’m going to put this pack right here…” Give me that. (laughs) I know how to wear a pack. When we did American Idol, especially the week of the finale, I thought all I did was give TV interviews all day long, every day.
CC: Did you ever imagine yourself in this position?
CA: God, no. I auditioned just for fun. I thought about that the other day after I went to the grocery store and had to sign fifteen autographs before leaving. On one hand, it’s just so flattering. On the other hand, sometimes it would be nice to get the bread and leave, you know?
CC: You mean get your paycheck? (laughs)
CA: (laughs) No, get the loaf of bread and leave. Some body once said, “You asked for it.” And I thought, “Did I really ask for it?” When I auditioned for this thing, I never for a second believed that I was going to be here today. I never thought I was going to be in the top fifteen, much less the top two.
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Jennifer Melendres: Of course, you hoped you might.
CA: I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I’m not an optimist. I’m a realist…or maybe even a pessimist.
CC: Is the glass half empty?
CA: The glass has water in it; that’s all I know. (laughs) I didn’t think I’d ever make it. Seventy thousand people. Six thousand people in line in Atlanta. I was not expecting to make it through that line of six thousand, much less go to Hollywood. It gives me the chills to even think about it. It really does. I just thought, “Let’s go out and spend a weekend in Atlanta and audition.”
JM: How do you like your new look?
CA: I got rid of my glasses and they changed my hair. That’s really all they did. They went shopping for me, so the clothes are different too. It wasn’t like Extreme Makeover where I got a nose job or anything. I went into it initially saying, “If I’m going to lose this, I’m going to lose it on my terms. I don’t want anybody messing with me. I’m going to dress the way I want to dress.” And then I lost it on my own terms, and when I came back for the wild card show I said, “Okay, do whatever you want to do with my hair. That’s fine.” (laughs). I still wore what I wanted to wear and I made it through. Once I made it to the top twelve, I thought, “Well, I’m going any week now, so I might as well let them do whatever they want.”
Somebody asked me, “Aren’t you offended when they say you look nerdy?” I’m not, because I don’t put any emphasis or stock in that. I don’t care. I don’t judge a person by how they look so it doesn’t matter. As long as I don’t change [in my heart and in my head] then I’m the same person. It’s just a different wrapping.
CC: As you continue to grow in popularity, do you see yourself putting up a wall to maintain your own sanity?
CA: Realistically, there’s a good possibility that might happen. If I’m signing autographs and I see one hundred people in a line I’ve got to remind myself, “That person is one one-hundredth of my day, but to them I’m their day.” You know what I mean? Unless they meet J.Lo later on.
CC: I interviewed Donny Osmond for the last cover of ABILITY. Donny has been in front of cameras since he was 6 years old and I was surprised how, after all these years, he was opening and holding the door for the few people who were with us. He was pushing the elevator button. He was still a father, a regular guy. It was interesting to see he had been able to center himself.
CA: Maybe I need to find out his secret. (laughs)
JM: How did you find yourself drawn to working with children with disabilities?
CA: I worked at an elementary school and with the YMCA for awhile. The principal at the school where I worked asked me to substitute for a teacher who was on maternity leave. I fell in love with it from there. Every child’s different, and that was fascinating to me. You have to figure out how to communicate. I just fell in love with the job and wanted to go back the next year. I taught another full year and decided, “You know what? This is what I want to do.” I then student-taught at an elementary school level and I was a CAP worker for a middle school.
JM: What is a CAP worker?
CA: CAP stands for Community Alternatives Program. Basically. CAP is a federally-funded program [in North Carolina] for individuals with mental disabilities. It’s funded by the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). As a CAP worker. I worked with a child with autism named Mike Bubel.
CC: I’ve discussed with teachers in special education the benefits of mainstreaming students, and I always understood that schools were to mainstream students with disabilities as much as possible to help ensure they will not be disenfranchised when they graduate.
CA: Right. That’s what IDEA mandates. The money funds the schools in addition to other programs. The goal of that program is to help children learn certain behaviors that will allow them to be mainstreamed. The difficult part is that it’s all done at home, but you can’t mainstream a kid in their own house.
CC: Socialization is imperative to mainstreaming a child.
CA: Absolutely. I tried to take Mike into the community as much as possible. We went shopping and I helped him buy things. It gets him out of the house and puts him in the mainstream population. I’d pick him up from school, let him eat a snack and then we’d go out.
JM: You went from being a contestant on American Idol to a household name. Are you still the same guy, passionate about helping children? How do you see yourself using your new status in the future?
CA: Well, I’m not that far removed from it. It’s only been a year since I was student teaching. When I got to the Top 10 I thought, “Wait a second, I’d better start being more visible.” I realized I could sit there and collect my paycheck or I could try to do something with it. That was the point when I decided I wanted to start the foundation.
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CC: Tell us about it.
CA: The Bubel-Aiken Foundation is focused on main streaming children into programs that don’t typically accept kids with disabilities due to a lack of training or staff. During the eight years I worked with kids I watched them get turned away too many times. We had one particular girl; we’ll call her “Crystal.” She had moderate to severe mental retardation. She was energetic and her receptive language was pretty good, but her expressive language was not good at all. We had trouble working with her, and there wasn’t the CAP ration available to give her the one-on-one attention she needed. A group with two counselors and fifteen other kids wouldn’t have worked for her. I tried my best to step out of my role as program director as much as possible and work with her individually. We found some volunteers for certain but then our resources ran low. My director actually called the mother and said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t take your child anymore. We’ll give you your money back, but you’re going to have to find somewhere else for her in the afternoons.” That steamed me. I was fuming, not just for the child’s sake. but also for the mom. She needs a place to put her child.
CC: It can be very disheartening to see that the children who need the help the most are often the ones being failed by the system.
CA: We had situations like that a number of times. At one point we actually had a staff member stage an uproar because the same director wasn’t going to let a girl with autism into our program. We raged about it until he let her in. It was hard, but this child grew a lot that year. She’s non-verbal. When she came in her social skills were really, really low. After being surrounded by kids her age, she started to sit and eat lunch at the table instead of sitting on the ground or running around flipping her food. She began mimicking what the other kids were doing. It demonstrated why inclusion is so important. With the foundation I wanted to combine both of these parts of my life my background in special education and my involvement with the YMCA after-school program-to prove that kids can learn just by being in that social environment. The goal of the foundation is to fund training for YMCA programs, for the Boys and Girls Club, private camps, any type of after-school program or any type of childcare program. The foundation will fund programs to train their staff to deal with individuals with more severe disabilities. If that’s not enough, then we hope to be able to offer funding for a trained person who could provide one-on-one attention, so the child can go to camp and be with typically-functioning peers of the same age and be completely immersed in those environments. The foundation will also reward programs that are already accomplishing that. The goal is to really include kids in everything that kids without disabilities are able to do. In turn, it will help these kids learn more social skills. At the same time, kids without disabilities also learn social skills because they’re learning that the kids with disabilities are more than just kids sitting down the hall in the special class they are their peers.
JM: At what stage is the foundation now?
CA: It’s still in the early stages. Fran Skinner Lewis is the executive director. She’s worked really fast and hard on making this our goal: to get kids included with typical kids as much as possible. That’s the nutshell.
CC: That’s great. You’re really taking the spirit of the legislation into a practical financial sense. The problem has always been in trying to fund these initiatives.
CA: Well, CAP is the government funding for this type of program. For example, if Mike’s mom wanted to sign him up for an after-school program or for summer camp, I could go with him if I were his CAP worker. The availability of CAP funding at the present is low and getting lower. There’s a waiting list three years long. The Bubel-Aiken Foundation is named after the family of one of the kids I worked with. The child’s mom got him signed up for camp because she knew that she was going to need these funds when he got into high school. She also knew the waiting lists were long and that if she didn’t get him signed up now, she wouldn’t get funds when he was older. We hope to supplement what the CAP program is doing, but without the restrictions and red tape that CAP has. Hopefully, we’ll eliminate some of that.
JM: Why is there so much red tape?
CA: Because it’s the federal government. It’s impossible to do anything. Your child has to meet a certain requirement. Certain kids, such as those with Fragile X, do not meet the requirements to get CAP services, but kids with Fragile X are just like kids with autism-it’s the same thing. Money comes from the federal government and is funneled through the state government out to the counties, and then counties give the money to private organizations.
CC: Do you mean contractors?
CA: Yes, I do. I worked for a company called Autism Services. We had to be approved by the federal
CA: Well, CAP is the government funding for this type of program. For example, if Mike’s mom wanted to sign him up for an after-school program or for summer camp, I could go with him if I were his CAP worker. The availability of CAP funding at the present is low and getting lower. There’s a waiting list three years long. The Bubel-Aiken Foundation is named after the family of one of the kids I worked with. The child’s mom got him signed up for camp because she knew that she was going to need these funds when he got into high school. She also knew the waiting lists were long and that if she didn’t get him signed up now, she wouldn’t get funds when he was older. We hope to supplement what the CAP program is doing, but without the restrictions and red tape that CAP has. Hopefully, we’ll eliminate some of that.
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JM: Why is there so much red tape?
CA: Because it’s the federal government. It’s impossible to do anything. Your child has to meet a certain requirement. Certain kids, such as those with Fragile X, do not meet the requirements to get CAP services, but kids with Fragile X are just like kids with autism-it’s the same thing. Money comes from the federal government and is funneled through the state government out to the counties, and then counties give the money to private organizations.
CC: Do you mean contractors?
CA: Yes, I do. I worked for a company called Autism Services. We had to be approved by the federal government, state government and the county government in order to get any money. That’s a pain.
There’s a lot of red tape and we hope a benefit of starting the foundation will be to cut some of that red tape because we’re non-profit. The foundation is not made up of people trying to make money from it. It’s going to be people who do whatever we have to do in order to make it work. Fran is in meetings with the YMCA right now to get a partnership going.
We’re working with Bob Pasternack, the [Assistant Secretary of Education for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services]. Bob is helping us develop one basic curriculum for training the staff. Our goal is to be in YMCA programs. We don’t want to be exclusive to the YMCA, but there’s an obvious connection there for a partnership. The YMCA where I worked was sued by a family because of the same thing that we did to Crystal. I cheered for the family and I think they won the Y had to accept their kid. Thank God.
CC: When did you come up with the idea for the foundation?
CA: I’d thought about it for a while even before this happened. I never really thought it was a possibility. I just thought, “One day it’d be really great.” I had considered at one point trying to help the YMCA in my area hire someone to raise money for that specific purpose on a very local basis. Then I came up with the idea of really doing it. When I got in the Top 10, then the Top 6, I realized [how the exposure could benefit the foundation.]
CC: How did you find Fran?
CA: Fran Lewis is a friend of my mother’s. She’s a lawyer in Chicago and she worked a lot with fundraising for Melinda Gates’ immunization charity. She has also raised money for Queen Noor of Jordan. Her back ground is in education and that was what she was initially going to do before she became an attorney. I talked to her at some length and she really has become passionate about it. She has a heart for kids with special needs and for education. She recently turned down opportunities from Queen Noor as well as Bill and Melinda Gates because she’s focusing on the foundation.
CC: Fran sounds like a great person to have on your team!
CA: She certainly is, and it’s very possible this may become a full-time position for her because it’s something she’s so passionate about. I think it’s a very serious issue, and it’s a cause that she feels strongly about as well. Everybody we talk to seems to really understand why it’s important and what the benefits will be.
CC: Good luck to you. We wish you and the foundation all the best.
CA: Thank you.
foreword by Jennifer Melendres
