The Old Saying

Aging Toastmasters Try to Speak to a Younger Crowd

Here buzzes a roomful of talkers with no one to listen.

On Thursday morning at 8, some 1,600 practiced public speakers chat amid the whooshing air conditioning of the Hilton Washington, gathered for the 75th annual Toastmasters International Convention.

They meet and greet, guffaw, nod heads of salt-and-pepper hair and do the real communicating with their hands.

Once, these smooth talkers would rather have lain in the coffin than given the eulogy. To boost their confidence, these onetime shy kids joined Toastmasters, the nonprofit club that sits its members around a table where they're pushed to deliver speeches in front of peers who count how many "uhs" they let fall, how well they incorporate gestures, humor and props. (A speaker once gave out slices of an onion to show how he could be "surprisingly sweet.")

There are no classes, only the simple act of speaking to the group. After a year, even the most timid among them learn to flash business cards like baseball cards and shake a man's hand like they're tugging him ashore.

Members can move up through a system of rankings. The top ranking is "Distinguished Toastmaster," and nearly all attending the convention have achieved this honor -- but they continue to attend local chapters for the social atmosphere or the opportunity to give back to others.

Or just because they now love to speak. These are the program's bubbliest and brightest, the success stories who can lead a corporate meeting with the grace of a dancer. (Toastmaster Josef Martens took ballet to improve his hand gestures.) They come from Japan and Kansas. They bring husbands and wives (once called "Toastmistresses," though the president's wife is the "First Lady"). For $520, members come to the convention for a lineup of self-improvement lectures, award luncheons, a flag parade and a grand finale on Saturday morning, the World Championship of Public Speaking. On the stage of the Hilton's International Ballroom, the globe's 10 best Toastmasters face off with prepared speeches for the coveted world champion title.

But despite all the backslaps, a grim reality becomes evident: The average age in the room might be 65. Toastmasters is not cool. Last year, for the first time, membership in North America decreased, by 1 percent. In the VIP room, musing over the situation, Executive Director Donna Groh, 56, admits that "a lot of young people think we're the old boys' club."

"You have to be 40 to be a Toastmaster," says 16-year-old James Brady, who hung around the hotel all day, bored, dragged here all the way from Naas, Ireland, by his Toastmaster father.

Actually, members can be as young as 18. And since 1973 women have been eligible to join. So why the reputation?

"Buickization," wrote Steve Brandon, an accountant and member, in June's Toastmaster magazine. "In Buick's case, its popularity fell because its traditional clientele aged and younger generations did not replace the steady attrition of the older customers. . . . I have seen the older generations consistently overrepresented in Toastmasters, and I wonder what fate will befall Toastmasters in two or three generations."

Young people still visit Toastmasters to get over the jitters -- but once that's done, they usually cycle out of the club. "A lot of people leave after one or two years," says Groh.