Speaker 1: Hey there from my Heart Radio. This is Autisma's first child. However,
Speaker 1: I'm neither John don Van nor Karen Zuker. My name
Speaker 1: is Alexander Richie and I'm one of the producers on
Speaker 1: the show and today I'll be grabbing the reins. So
Speaker 1: episode six, Christmas and Forest. Back in December, Karen managed
Speaker 1: to score some invites to the Bank of Forest holiday
Speaker 1: shin dig The Bank of Forest is still part owned
Speaker 1: by Donald Triplet's family, and throughout the production of this show,
Speaker 1: I've been really immersed in the history of Forest and
Speaker 1: learning about Donald's life. I really have come to you
Speaker 1: Donald as like a notable historical figure. I mean, how
Speaker 1: often do you meet someone from a small southern town
Speaker 1: important enough to have a Wikipedia page about them. So
Speaker 1: I jumped to the opportunity to go to the place
Speaker 1: and meet Donald. It spend a few days with John
Speaker 1: and Kieren. While John and Karen flew into Jackson from
Speaker 1: the East Coast, I drove down to Forest from my
Speaker 1: place in Birmingham, Alabama. It's about a three hour trip
Speaker 1: and I always feel like I'm driving down to Mississippi,
Speaker 1: coming down the foothills of Appalache down to the farmland
Speaker 1: and sometimes down into another era. Central Mississippi is pretty
Speaker 1: flat and the right is sort of hypnotic. In working
Speaker 1: on this story, I got lost in the thirty foot few,
Speaker 1: starting from Dr Lee O'Connor's paper from all those years
Speaker 1: ago that described the puzzling behavior as this little boy
Speaker 1: from Forest, Mississippi, Donald t While Donald has lived what
Speaker 1: is by any standard, a really good life, a full
Speaker 1: blown neurodiversity movement Capital MP has taken shape. People on
Speaker 1: the autism spectrum can now share the same sort of
Speaker 1: dignity and independence that is Donald's day to day reality.
Speaker 1: I had so many questions about Donald's life as a reporter.
Speaker 1: I want to get below the surface of things and
Speaker 1: understand how people experience the world. I've learned so much
Speaker 1: about Donald in Forest for making this podcast, but had
Speaker 1: little sense of his inner life. Maybe I don't get it,
Speaker 1: but I wondered if he ever feels lonely or isolated?
Speaker 1: Did being on the spectrum influence those feelings? What would
Speaker 1: it be like seeing him with his friends and neighbors.
Speaker 1: I felt really lucky to have this opportunity to peek
Speaker 1: in the Donald's life with John and Karen. If anybody
Speaker 1: can help me make sense of it. They can. Three
Speaker 1: hours later, I found myself in Forest. All right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm in uh do down Forest, Mississippi, right outside
Speaker 1: the the Bank of Forest, and I'm just gonna grab
Speaker 1: some sounds. But has that classic southern small town thing
Speaker 1: going on. The architecture just kind of takes you back
Speaker 1: to another time. There's a town square with a courthouse
Speaker 1: in the middle, and all the buildings situated around it
Speaker 1: or low and boxing and brick, and the storefronts all
Speaker 1: have signs with that cool old typography. Square body pickup
Speaker 1: trucks are driving around, and people are and ironically wearing
Speaker 1: nineties fashions, and just like the rest of Mississippi, the
Speaker 1: place is covered in a sort of beige pattina. It's
Speaker 1: just beautiful now. Forest calls itself the Poultry capital of
Speaker 1: the World, and I myself grew up in a poultry
Speaker 1: town in North Alabama, and driving in from the interstate,
Speaker 1: I recognized that earthy tang lingering in the air. I
Speaker 1: knew I was in the right place. Karen and John
Speaker 1: have a big weekend planned down here. Not only are
Speaker 1: we going to the Christmas party with Donald, but we're
Speaker 1: going to check out Beamon and Mary Triplett's house. Donald
Speaker 1: just moved out after like eighty seven years of living there,
Speaker 1: So one of the first things we're gonna do is
Speaker 1: drop in on Donald check out his new digs. His
Speaker 1: younger brother Oliver lived here alone right up until the
Speaker 1: end of his life. After Oliver died, Don's nephew also Oliver,
Speaker 1: fixed up the place, making it basically handicap accessible, just
Speaker 1: in case. Then Donald took it over. We're back at
Speaker 1: Donald's hows and we're gonna go and say hi to him.
Speaker 1: That was John recorded the moment of seeing the new
Speaker 1: place for the first time on a spell. The door
Speaker 1: opens and there's done. Oh, Karen just lights up when
Speaker 1: she sees you. He's small and stooped, and it looks
Speaker 1: every inch of his eighty eight years. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: that tie. Yeah. Yeah, he's wearing a green blazer and
Speaker 1: a huge funny Christmas time there. Yeah yeah, Donald was
Speaker 1: gonna meet you. Good to meet you. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: your tie. That's awesome. Nice. Donald gave us the whole tour.
Speaker 1: I liked him immediately. It's just impossible not to. He's
Speaker 1: this incredibly sweet man and he's got a really particular
Speaker 1: kind of way he walks. It's well, well, i'll let
Speaker 1: you listen. So with Donald as a docent, we start
Speaker 1: the tour. If I come in, yeah, we're gone, done
Speaker 1: a quick tour, and then this is the kitchen. This
Speaker 1: is the kitchen. Okay, that's why I'm a Christians. Pretty ash.
Speaker 1: So you guts some presents under there? They're old photos.
Speaker 1: Everywhere has zeroed in on wine, in particular in a
Speaker 1: glass china cabinet looking thing of Donald and a woman
Speaker 1: in a wedding dress. Who is this? Oh, I's a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine. She got married on me. But
Speaker 1: I went to Wold winning and I got that picture
Speaker 1: made nice. Down the hallway, the walls are covered in
Speaker 1: more old photos and plaque with a triplet family coat
Speaker 1: of arms, and of course some golf trips. I think
Speaker 1: it Bill Hayden. Yeah, Aborn University. Where's that tanjection in
Speaker 1: the pro Terran church? Uh? Yeah, I'm with my middle
Speaker 1: chips college degree in my LAMB Alpha fraternity. Typically how
Speaker 1: long have you been here since trying the eighth of September? Okay,
Speaker 1: you're still getting used to it. Huh yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: proought to get a used to it. The land, Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting the l It's very nice. Donald's new place is
Speaker 1: a smaller ranch style home that more or less blends
Speaker 1: in with the other ones in the neighborhood. It's nice,
Speaker 1: freshly painted, manicured lawn and a driveway that was definitely
Speaker 1: pressure washed not too long ago. On the tour, Don
Speaker 1: leads us to his office, or, as he calls it,
Speaker 1: the place where he keeps his monitor in printing my
Speaker 1: computer and model Knight here, Oh, very cool, and right here,
Speaker 1: which we're not going to bed. Then he shows me
Speaker 1: the outfit he has picked out for time or not
Speaker 1: let me see, and his impressive collection of necktie's that's
Speaker 1: pretty sharp. Yeah. In his office there's a big bookshelf,
Speaker 1: and there's John and Karen's book in a different key,
Speaker 1: prominently display it on the pedestal on the top shelf.
Speaker 1: You got a book out there? Whose book is that?
Speaker 1: He deferent? That's why I keep book about shooting you
Speaker 1: and John? Wow, it's about you, actually, yeah, actually about me.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful moment. I could tell John was so
Speaker 1: proud he wore this ultra high wattage smile. How does
Speaker 1: that feel? Seeing book and with with with Donald's circles complete. Wow,
Speaker 1: this is a beautiful picture. Oh yeah. We left Don
Speaker 1: alone after not too long. He wanted to watch the
Speaker 1: Army Navy football game on TV. Then we went over
Speaker 1: to Marry and Beamon Triplet's old house. It's pretty Faulkner
Speaker 1: esque pastel yellow and blue and real pretty soft pink.
Speaker 1: For decades, the house was famous for Mary triplets garden.
Speaker 1: She had some award winning flower beds. Now that's all gone.
Speaker 1: The roof and the portrait saggy. Now inside it smelled
Speaker 1: old and a little musty, so his just the old
Speaker 1: sears and rope book. The house is still filled with
Speaker 1: old furniture. You can just tell the place was gorgeous
Speaker 1: back in the day. After his mind died, Don stayed
Speaker 1: here on his own, and he really didn't touch a thing.
Speaker 1: When Don moved out in September, he just kind of
Speaker 1: up and left left. There's even still some pretzels and
Speaker 1: cheesy poots and a little container on the breakfast table
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. After his mom died, Donald was left
Speaker 1: here alone. He shut it off, the rooms he didn't
Speaker 1: care about, and he basically created a an apartment within
Speaker 1: the house, two rooms away from his bedroom. There's some
Speaker 1: black mold spread across the wall, but that's part of
Speaker 1: the house that he effectively abandoned. He didn't visit it,
Speaker 1: didn't furnish it, didn't eat it. The place did not
Speaker 1: deteriorate all at once. It happened over time. Donald's family
Speaker 1: for years tried to get him to leave the house
Speaker 1: behind and find someplace new. But Donald's day his choice.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to spend money to keep the place
Speaker 1: up either. Also his choice. He is an adult, he
Speaker 1: does not have a guardian given his priorities. It was
Speaker 1: a rational choice. This was his home and he wanted
Speaker 1: to be there on his terms. I mean Donald lived
Speaker 1: in the same bedroom he grew up in until he
Speaker 1: was eight seven. That blows my mind. Johnny Care reminds
Speaker 1: me that this devout adherents, sameness, and the routine are
Speaker 1: all hallmarks of autism from the very beginning and even today.
Speaker 1: In the official definition that that people on the spectrum
Speaker 1: really like sameness, they like predictability. There there they struggle
Speaker 1: with change, and the textbook says they have restricted repetitive
Speaker 1: pattern patterns of behavior or interests or activities, including this
Speaker 1: insistence on sameness or sometimes inflexible adherence to routine or
Speaker 1: ritualized patterns. It's not everybody, but it's a lot of
Speaker 1: people on the spectrum. Definitely true of Donald in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. He totally has his routines. He gets
Speaker 1: up every day and he goes for a walk at
Speaker 1: the same time. He needs to be at work right
Speaker 1: on time. He watches Will of Fortune at four o'clock.
Speaker 1: And in fact, when my son Mickey and all met,
Speaker 1: the two of them sat down to watch Will of
Speaker 1: Fortune together because they both love that show. And this
Speaker 1: repetitiveness and amenus it is often really comforting to people
Speaker 1: on the autism spectrum. Anyway, back of the house, we're
Speaker 1: up in the attic. Now. We've been warned that the
Speaker 1: attic floor isn't super sturdy, are you We're not seriously
Speaker 1: afraid that it's gonna fall though, right, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like it's that bad. There is a little crooked
Speaker 1: and then there's this thing here. Donald gave us okay
Speaker 1: to go up there anyway and look for a carbon
Speaker 1: copy of Mr Beaman's letter to Dr Connor. We started
Speaker 1: referring to it simply as the Connor letter, and it's
Speaker 1: been the great white whale of John and Karen's research
Speaker 1: over the years. Maybe it's up here, it's somewhere, good
Speaker 1: size addict, dude, this would be like where you would
Speaker 1: definitely have band rehearsal, you know. Yeah, and there's stuff everywhere.
Speaker 1: I mean it's jam packed with stuff, old Christmas decorations,
Speaker 1: old golf clubs, even Beaman and Mary's traveling trunk, like
Speaker 1: a real traveling trunk, suitcases full of letters and stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: John and Karen start looking around. This plays out like
Speaker 1: any investigative journalists fever dream come to line. Sorry, just
Speaker 1: having like this thing like some animals gonna come up.
Speaker 1: Truth is, though they haven't been through everything up here.
Speaker 1: I mean there are boxes and boxes and stuff and
Speaker 1: suitcases packed with all sorts of papers. We were upstairs
Speaker 1: for like three minutes and John's already finding stuff they've
Speaker 1: never seen before. And then he discovers a batch of
Speaker 1: photos from letters and postcards in this very grand old trunk.
Speaker 1: Oh that's when she was in Venice. So this looks
Speaker 1: like a traveling mhm. Nice fans. Yeah, you know these
Speaker 1: were letters that the triplets Donald's parents received when they
Speaker 1: were traveling around the world. I guess they did a
Speaker 1: lot of this fun. A few us later, John runs
Speaker 1: into stacks of love letters dating back a hundred years
Speaker 1: to win Beamon and Mary recording, but still no Connor letter.
Speaker 1: Brush the dust off. It's time for a break. But
Speaker 1: after the jump, I've goked some questions about love and
Speaker 1: friendship on the spectrum. So the attic at Don's house
Speaker 1: held up and we managed to climb back down. Thank god.
Speaker 1: I went back to my hotel and got gussied up
Speaker 1: for the Bank Afforce Christmas party. And along the way
Speaker 1: I thought that they look like Tut and Scoot to
Speaker 1: do a little pre game man pick out. Yeah, can
Speaker 1: I get a's like a small cute flow? Yes, mate,
Speaker 1: that would be it. The love letters we found got
Speaker 1: me wondering about Don's life. You still these photos in
Speaker 1: his house, and it becomes really clear that he's a
Speaker 1: person who seeks out connection and values friendship. But Don
Speaker 1: has never been married, and he's never really had a
Speaker 1: girlfriend either. Karen told me that there was a woman
Speaker 1: that he was really attracted to you, but things never
Speaker 1: really worked out. Remember how we talked about people with
Speaker 1: autism being misunderstood in a previous episode. How does that
Speaker 1: work with courtship, rituals, attraction, flirting, all that stuff that
Speaker 1: isn't really set out loud. I asked John and Karen
Speaker 1: about that. You know, you look at it this way,
Speaker 1: and it's something that I've heard from a lot of
Speaker 1: autistic people who have told me about their experiences dating, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You talk about the language of love. It's not all words,
Speaker 1: and spoken language can already be a challenge for people
Speaker 1: in the spectrum who don't get often things like sarcasm
Speaker 1: or innuendo. But the language of love, a lot of
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with words. It's a glance,
Speaker 1: it's a raised eyebrow, it perhaps the way you move
Speaker 1: your body. These are all very very social, subtle signals
Speaker 1: that were you know, most of us instinctively kind of
Speaker 1: pick up on over time and we learn how to
Speaker 1: speak that language. But it's far more challenging for people
Speaker 1: on the spectrum. You know, But just think of a
Speaker 1: thing like eye contact. You know, when two people meet,
Speaker 1: as they say, their eyes lock. But what if you're
Speaker 1: a somebody who doesn't know when to look away. What
Speaker 1: if you stare too long? That's then called staring, not
Speaker 1: looking lovingly, not making eye contact, that's that becomes something
Speaker 1: different than can really really be a challenge for people
Speaker 1: in the spectrum to know what the timing on something
Speaker 1: like that is. Look, it's hard enough for all of us,
Speaker 1: but when you have trouble with those social cues that
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with what people literally mean, that
Speaker 1: they mean what they say and say what they mean,
Speaker 1: which isn't always true in this kind of dance, that's
Speaker 1: when it gets really really challenging for people on the spectrum.
Speaker 1: So on the drive from Forest to downtown Jackson, and
Speaker 1: I'm crushing this coke float and I started thinking about
Speaker 1: the big universal themes running through this love, kindness connection,
Speaker 1: affording others respect and dignity, resilience. I think those intangible
Speaker 1: things I just listed are are part of the story
Speaker 1: that are going to endure for me. Now, I'm excited
Speaker 1: to see Don surrounded by folks from the bank. Karen
Speaker 1: and John told me he's been tight with a lot
Speaker 1: of these people for years, and I'm wondering what Don's
Speaker 1: friendships are like. Through all my interactions with John and Karen,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I've ever heard them talk about Donald
Speaker 1: having any friends and Forest who are also on the spectrum.
Speaker 1: It seems like maybe all his friendships are with neurotypical folks.
Speaker 1: I imagine building a lasting bond with somebody who lives
Speaker 1: their life in a different key can be difficult. Here's
Speaker 1: what John and Karen told me. I mean, people in
Speaker 1: the spectrum have told us that the reason they struggle
Speaker 1: so much is they actually do want to make connections
Speaker 1: with everybody, and they just don't necessarily know how to.
Speaker 1: They like all of us, They just they really really
Speaker 1: want to be loved. It's often hard for people with
Speaker 1: autism to connect, and sometimes it's the rest of us
Speaker 1: who needs to go more than halfway in order to
Speaker 1: start a relationship. My nephew Sam has known Mickey his
Speaker 1: whole life and they've never really connected. But after Sam
Speaker 1: saw our movie, he learned that Mickey was obsessed with cats.
Speaker 1: The next time Sam saw Mickey, he went up to
Speaker 1: him and he me out and that was it. They
Speaker 1: had the basis to start a conversation. Sam had met
Speaker 1: Mickey more than halfway and they connected. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought up Mickey's obsession with cats, Karen. It actually reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of a conversation we had with Dr
Speaker 1: Pete Gerhardt relationships and friendships are bidirectional and not doing
Speaker 1: him many favors just by saying, Okay, I'm gonna talk
Speaker 1: to you about cats for the next forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: because that he thinks everybody's going to talk to him
Speaker 1: about cats for forty five minutes, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think Mickey and I also have enough of relationship because
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about cats right now, and
Speaker 1: then we'll have like one or two converse one or
Speaker 1: two sentences on something else and try and slip back
Speaker 1: to hats because he's smart enough to know, Okay, I
Speaker 1: think I can goosele this back in now, you know.
Speaker 1: But I also kind of respect that about him, um
Speaker 1: that he does that. But he also I don't think
Speaker 1: he's ever gotten upset with me when I said I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about that or I don't want
Speaker 1: to Can we talk about something? Let's talk about something
Speaker 1: else right now. Yeah, I did say I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: well because I talked to him like he's a He's
Speaker 1: not a client, you know, he's a colleague. He's a friend.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know him as a as a client
Speaker 1: in any sense of the word, Like yes, I've given
Speaker 1: you advice about what I think, and you know, point
Speaker 1: in some directions. But um, I talked to him like
Speaker 1: I would talk to anybody else, and I think that's
Speaker 1: um both appropriate and respectful. And what he told us is,
Speaker 1: if you really want to experience true emotion, you should
Speaker 1: have a relationship with someone on the autism spectrum, because
Speaker 1: there's no pretense. If they like you, they just really
Speaker 1: like you. If someone with autism is your friend, they
Speaker 1: are truly your friend. When they're happy, there's no hiding it,
Speaker 1: and when they're sad, you can't miss it. When you
Speaker 1: meet someone with autism and you have a relationship with them,
Speaker 1: it's the real deal. I don't know if Don has
Speaker 1: anybody in his life who challenges him or talks to
Speaker 1: him in the way that Pete Gerhardt does with Mickey,
Speaker 1: but I do know that Donald's daily routine, if you
Speaker 1: stand back and take a look at it, is really
Speaker 1: built around points of connection with the people at Forest.
Speaker 1: It seems like everybody in his world is neurotypical too.
Speaker 1: So every morning he goes to a coffee shop, sits
Speaker 1: around with a bunch of other old deeds. Then in
Speaker 1: the afternoon he heads over to the bank. Playing God
Speaker 1: Scrambles with two or three other people at a time
Speaker 1: puts him in extended contact with people, and not just
Speaker 1: familiar friends, but strangers for hours at a time. We
Speaker 1: want to take a quick break, but after that it's
Speaker 1: party time. The Bank of Forest Christmas Party was actually
Speaker 1: held in downtown Jackson. It's the capital of Mississippi and
Speaker 1: also the nearest big city the Forest. When we arrived,
Speaker 1: Don still had on his Christmas tie and the green
Speaker 1: blazer and slacks he showed me at his house. He
Speaker 1: looked great. It's worth mentioning that Donald Triplett loves the holidays.
Speaker 1: Every year, he even dresses up as Santa for the
Speaker 1: Bank party, and he's famous for giving highly unorthodox gifts.
Speaker 1: Year after year. He gives his family cheese, graders and bachelor's.
Speaker 1: Karen asked his nephew's wife, Ingrid about it. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I get, yes, and sometimes I mean when he travels,
Speaker 1: he'll bring you back different little things from places, so
Speaker 1: key chains and magnets and things. But at Christmas, I
Speaker 1: usually get some wine doesn't get in my family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they might get something. I don't know what he gets.
Speaker 1: I can't remember but when the kids get things like that.
Speaker 1: The Bank Christmas party event is a blow key business
Speaker 1: casual affair, open bar, solid buffet with a salad station,
Speaker 1: yeast rolls, and over there in the corner there's a
Speaker 1: guy carving pork line under a hot lamp. So, instead
Speaker 1: of following Donald around all night with a microphone, I
Speaker 1: decided to pin a little lab mike to the lapel
Speaker 1: of his green sports coast recorded. Then, from a distance,
Speaker 1: I watched Donald do his thing, hang out, Hey, sure,
Speaker 1: go to shure you again? Hey, good good. Once we
Speaker 1: got into the party, Donald navigated the crowd like a
Speaker 1: seasoned politician, saying alone, shaking hands to everyone he passed,
Speaker 1: and eventually meandering up to the bar red one. Don
Speaker 1: keeps it light. I'm just quit playing golf checkboard and
Speaker 1: I'm playing on the scramble. And that's about as deep
Speaker 1: as it gets. Though. He assigns numbers to new friends,
Speaker 1: and he makes up creative nicknames like Drew the Clue
Speaker 1: or Celestial Celestie. Hey a lot of Donnie, Hey, Drew
Speaker 1: the clue. All right, good to shoe you again. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't take me long to realize that Don has
Speaker 1: a soft spot for female attention. Hey, don or foreman,
Speaker 1: I've been showing you a car park the grant, but
Speaker 1: I had been showing you the whole thing. With Donald
Speaker 1: flirting with these women, it's kind of a game they
Speaker 1: all played together, little bit of a conversation all of
Speaker 1: its own. You know, he was beloved by them, and
Speaker 1: he's also respected by them. Some of them kind of
Speaker 1: look after him, and all of them know that he
Speaker 1: loves the attention, so they give him that attention and
Speaker 1: it's kind of their way of connecting back to him,
Speaker 1: some of the blonds. Right then, someone asked, who is
Speaker 1: your favorite lady? So if you number one girl? If
Speaker 1: your number one? Then Donald rattles to the list of
Speaker 1: other women he fancies Brianna and uh okay, So Don's
Speaker 1: go to maneuver when he's flirting is shooting them with
Speaker 1: rubber bands. Hey, hey, Howard, rubber band. He carries a
Speaker 1: bunch in his pocket and doesn't leave hung without them,
Speaker 1: and the ladies flirt right back. No, you got me.
Speaker 1: The rubber band routine is pretty funny and it's really endearing.
Speaker 1: At one point, Donald flicks a woman with a rubber band,
Speaker 1: and then he asked for it back so you can
Speaker 1: hit another woman. Nick Hey, it's really clear that Don
Speaker 1: fells at home with these people. He's having fun and
Speaker 1: they're having fun with him too. Hip the one. Then
Speaker 1: he sits down at a big round table, surrounded by
Speaker 1: wind and their husband's all lingered not too far away,
Speaker 1: pounding back long necks of the silver bullet. Everyone is
Speaker 1: settling into full party mode. I'm gonna goog you. Conversation
Speaker 1: moved to holiday shopping good. He's still talking to Melanie.
Speaker 1: Remember she's his number five girl. A few minutes later
Speaker 1: the speeches started. The president of the bank handed the
Speaker 1: microphone to Karen. John and Karen are legit celebrities and Forest.
Speaker 1: Let's give him a warm Bank of ours welcome a
Speaker 1: combination of the love of the community of Forest and
Speaker 1: Don and we're proud to have been able to be
Speaker 1: a part of all in this, So thank you for
Speaker 1: the Bank of Forest. CEO Alan Breeland got back up
Speaker 1: and gave some remarks. There was dessert and some coffee,
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much the night. On the surface,
Speaker 1: it seemed like a pretty typical company Christmas party, but
Speaker 1: seeing Donald in action answered so many of my questions.
Speaker 1: The Donald that shows up in Dr Connor's paper on autism,
Speaker 1: seems so alone, so disinterested in the company of others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Donald I met on my trip to Forest, that
Speaker 1: wasn't him. He grew, he adapted. What I saw was
Speaker 1: a man doing his very best to find connection. When
Speaker 1: I got home from Forest, I couldn't avoid thinking about
Speaker 1: Donald's parents marrying Beamon triplet and ultimately all they wanted
Speaker 1: was for their kid to live a life of independence
Speaker 1: and dignity. Mary Triplett believed that she and Beamon had succeeded.
Speaker 1: In nine, when Donald was thirty six or so, she
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to Dr Connor. Somehow she knew that
Speaker 1: her little boy would make it. He would make his
Speaker 1: way in the world outside of an institution. While Don
Speaker 1: is not completely normal, he has taken his place in
Speaker 1: society very well, so much better than we ever hoped for.
Speaker 1: If he can maintain status quote, I think he's adjusted
Speaker 1: sufficiently to take care of himself. For this much progress. Oh,
Speaker 1: we are grateful now. Dawn's never had any medications for
Speaker 1: his emotional trouble. I wish I knew what his inner
Speaker 1: feelings really are. As long as he continues as he
Speaker 1: is now, we can continue to be thankful. My guess
Speaker 1: is that Marion Beamon didn't want anything all that complicated
Speaker 1: for Donald, just that he'd be safe and protected, loved
Speaker 1: and happy. They wanted him to have what I want
Speaker 1: for my son, Mickey, just a place in the world.
Speaker 1: So it's really wonderful that that's how Donald's story turned
Speaker 1: out in the end. Yeah, I mean when we first
Speaker 1: reached out to him, oh gosh, that was years ago.
Speaker 1: At the start, we didn't know what we would find
Speaker 1: in terms of how his life went. So it was
Speaker 1: so good to discover that Donald was happy, that he
Speaker 1: had lived so fully and so independently and so surrounded
Speaker 1: by love and acceptance and support and community. And we
Speaker 1: got to tell that story in our book and in
Speaker 1: our movie and in this podcast. But there's one more
Speaker 1: remaining piece of the story that we didn't get to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's as important as the rest of it. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Donald was named case number one when Dr Leo
Speaker 1: Connor wrote that article describing autism ine and he built
Speaker 1: his description of autism around several of Donald's behaviors, but
Speaker 1: not just Donald's. Donald was case number one, but Dr Connor,
Speaker 1: in the same article talked about some other children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he described Case number two, a boy named Frederick, Case
Speaker 1: number three, a boy named Richard, Case four, Paul, Case five,
Speaker 1: Barbara six, Virginia, all the way up to Case eleven Elaine. Now,
Speaker 1: Connor always made it clear that Donald was the child
Speaker 1: who started it all for him, where he first recognized
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of autism. And he made it clear that
Speaker 1: he based most of his first portrait of autism on Donald.
Speaker 1: That's why he was case one. He really was where
Speaker 1: it all started for Connor. But the other kids, they
Speaker 1: played a role to. Their lives were also folded into
Speaker 1: the portrait Connor created. And how did their lives turn out?
Speaker 1: Cases too through eleven, Well, Connor got curious about that too,
Speaker 1: so he had his staff research that, and about a
Speaker 1: quarter century after he saw them as children, he published
Speaker 1: a follow up article that revealed how Donald's happy story
Speaker 1: really was the exception. So all of the kids, of course,
Speaker 1: were middle aged by the time Connor looked into what
Speaker 1: was going on. Some of them his staff couldn't even
Speaker 1: find one other like Donald, had enjoyed a pretty good
Speaker 1: life out in the community, but most of the rest
Speaker 1: they had been put in institutions. Some foot Connor reported
Speaker 1: in his follow up is heartbreaking, and some had been
Speaker 1: shifted over the years from one institution to another. Like
Speaker 1: Charles N. He was transferred to the State hospital at
Speaker 1: nine fifty He is still there now thirty two years old.
Speaker 1: Or Elaine C. In nineteen fifty one. She was transferred
Speaker 1: to the Hudson River State Hospital. She is still there.
Speaker 1: She is now thirty nine years old. These kids, Connor
Speaker 1: said in a really revealing phrase, all lost their luster.
Speaker 1: Several of them sort of wilted. They stopped being interested
Speaker 1: in the things that used to interest them. They lost
Speaker 1: some of their unique skills, or at least interest in
Speaker 1: engaging those skills. One cannot help but gain the impression
Speaker 1: that state hospital admission was tantamount to a life sentence,
Speaker 1: sentenced to being forcibly separated from society, isolated, invisible. So
Speaker 1: why those kids and not Donald. Part of it, as
Speaker 1: we went over in an earlier episode, is that Donald's
Speaker 1: parents were confident enough and had the means to stand
Speaker 1: up to experts and insist on making him visible to
Speaker 1: the world, very visible. But there was something else going on.
Speaker 1: Those kids had challenges Donald didn't have. They were either
Speaker 1: intellectually disabled or unable to use speech, or both, and
Speaker 1: in a way they were invisible because of the intensity
Speaker 1: of those challenges, which society did not know how to
Speaker 1: engage with or didn't want to. And in fact, there's
Speaker 1: a parallel thing happening today, not the institution's part, but
Speaker 1: the invisibility part. Yeah, a really profound thing happened over
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years or so. During that time,
Speaker 1: the definition of autism changed radically. It became a lot broader,
Speaker 1: and the criteria loosened up a lot, so that people
Speaker 1: who would not have been diagnosed with autism in the
Speaker 1: past now do get that diagnosis. For instance, Asperger syndrome.
Speaker 1: It used to be its own diagnosis. Now it's officially
Speaker 1: considered out of date. People who previously got that diagnosis
Speaker 1: now have autism. So the term autism now applies to
Speaker 1: many people who, despite challenges, are nevertheless able to live
Speaker 1: independently and to speak for themselves and to speak up
Speaker 1: for themselves, to go to college, to start a career,
Speaker 1: to find a partner, even as they struggle socially and
Speaker 1: face other more subtle but really pervasive challenges. Some are
Speaker 1: specially brilliant people, and it is great to see autistic
Speaker 1: pride and the energy of the neurodiversity movement, which is
Speaker 1: led primarily by this group of autistic people, people like
Speaker 1: John Robison and Amy Guarno, who you met earlier in
Speaker 1: the podcast. And it's great to see Hollywood getting the
Speaker 1: message creating shows now around smart, sympathetic, even inspiring autistic characters,
Speaker 1: their surgeons and lawyers and detectives. There's just one problem here.
Speaker 1: It's not the whole picture, not at all. There are
Speaker 1: a whole lot of people who can speak for themselves
Speaker 1: and that's fantastic, but there are many people on the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum who can't speak and are
Speaker 1: not heard today. They're the ones who are invisible. They
Speaker 1: are people whose autism comes with behaviors that are huge,
Speaker 1: profound challenges to living an independent life. Close to half
Speaker 1: of people with autism have intellectual disability. I think about
Speaker 1: a third are nonverbal um I think have co but
Speaker 1: psychiatric diagnoses. I've seen kids who kids who have to
Speaker 1: wear helmets and armstays to keep them from bending their
Speaker 1: arms because as soon as you release them, they punched
Speaker 1: themselves in the face hundreds of times an hour until
Speaker 1: they detached their own retinas. You know, I've seen autistic
Speaker 1: teenagers that still have to wear diapers that um, that
Speaker 1: have no language at all. That's Amy Lutts. She has
Speaker 1: a son named Jonah who's in his twenties. Now Hollywood
Speaker 1: doesn't make shows about people like Jonah who is only
Speaker 1: able to communicate with very few words. Nope, no Broadway
Speaker 1: shows either. Some of the realities of Jonah's life just
Speaker 1: can't be romanticized, like how when he was a child,
Speaker 1: how violent he could get, which is not unusual with
Speaker 1: the kind of autism he has. No one wants to
Speaker 1: hear about about the autistic person that attacked his mother
Speaker 1: or smashed his head against the floor, Like that's a
Speaker 1: really disturbing story. And when people say autism is on
Speaker 1: a spectrum, what they mean is that it's not like
Speaker 1: a condition that where either you have it or you don't,
Speaker 1: and if you have it, you kind of look like
Speaker 1: someone else who has it. What it means by spectrum,
Speaker 1: it means is a very broad range of impairment, and
Speaker 1: it might be extraordinarily mild at the highest end, or
Speaker 1: on the more severe end, the disabilities can be very profound.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of disagreement about what single word appropriately
Speaker 1: captures these manifestations of autism, whether it should be called
Speaker 1: severe autism or profound autism or something else. But we're
Speaker 1: talking about the population of diagnosed people, but for having
Speaker 1: mothers and fathers who are out there fighting for them,
Speaker 1: they are invisible in the current conversation around autism. And
Speaker 1: supporting those children daily, often round the clock, becomes the
Speaker 1: defining commitment of these parents lives, even to the small
Speaker 1: things you don't think of in Amy's case, like the
Speaker 1: hardware on the front and back doors on the inside. Um,
Speaker 1: we have code locks on our door, on all our
Speaker 1: exterior doors where you have to put in the code
Speaker 1: to enter or to leave the house, which was the thing,
Speaker 1: the kind of the tool that we found that finally
Speaker 1: stopped the elopement that had kind of exposed Jonah to
Speaker 1: a lot of risk when he was a lot younger.
Speaker 1: We've had these locks for a year so UM. But
Speaker 1: when Jonah was younger, he would find a way to
Speaker 1: slip out someone, you know, he'd get out the front door,
Speaker 1: he dropped out of some windows. Now our windows all
Speaker 1: have locks, and several times we found him at the
Speaker 1: base of our driveway as a busy road. We found
Speaker 1: him walking down um this busy road on his iPad,
Speaker 1: you know, with traffic stopped on either side, while somebody
Speaker 1: tried to coax him out of the road, and somebody
Speaker 1: else called the police. Now, to be clear, we've met Jonah,
Speaker 1: Karen and I. We've spent time with him, and he's
Speaker 1: a great guy. Connecting with him just takes more effort
Speaker 1: than maybe most of us are used to, but everybody's
Speaker 1: going to make the effort. In fact, we wish Hollywood
Speaker 1: would make more movies about people like Jonah. There could
Speaker 1: be some really cool scenes. Jonah loves to spin. He spins.
Speaker 1: I don't know that he spins every day, but he
Speaker 1: spins sometimes. He spends many times a day. It's one
Speaker 1: of the I mean, he looks like Scott Hamilton on
Speaker 1: ice skates. Sometimes he spins so fast, and my other
Speaker 1: kids sometimes try to spin with him. Nobody can keep
Speaker 1: up with him. We're just not capable of spinning like that.
Speaker 1: And sometimes he slows down. And sometimes he kind of
Speaker 1: holds his fingers in front of his eyes and looks
Speaker 1: into the light, and you know, I kind of wonder
Speaker 1: what he's looking at as the world kind of spins
Speaker 1: around him. The other thing about Jonah's life is his
Speaker 1: family is so there for him. He's got four brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters, including a set of twins, so there's a
Speaker 1: immunity right there, and they totally have his back. One time,
Speaker 1: when my twins were maybe like five or six, and
Speaker 1: they had one of those birthday parties where you invite
Speaker 1: the whole class, one of their classmates said afterwards, you know,
Speaker 1: if you you know, if that kid who goes is
Speaker 1: there your next birthday party, don't invite me? And uh,
Speaker 1: and the twins were like, no problem. You know, they
Speaker 1: didn't invite him. He never came over for a play date.
Speaker 1: You know, they were not going to be friends with
Speaker 1: somebody who who was like that. I just love that story,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately, the undertone to it is that people like
Speaker 1: Jonah still are not welcome in a lot of places,
Speaker 1: that their degree of disability makes people uncomfortable, which is
Speaker 1: part of what keeps them invisible in the larger conversation
Speaker 1: around autism, or as Amy summed it up, you know,
Speaker 1: I think severe autism and severe as Jonah's. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't really know how many people are affected, but
Speaker 1: it's not you know, you don't see people like doing
Speaker 1: out in the community all the time. A lot of
Speaker 1: people who have it are are isolated, they can't go
Speaker 1: out in the community. And I think this is going
Speaker 1: to be a really important, you know, window into that
Speaker 1: into that life and into those people who do struggle.
Speaker 1: You know, even the people doing science about autism are
Speaker 1: part of this problem. A few years ago, the Journal
Speaker 1: of Autism and Developmental Disorders reported that the number of
Speaker 1: studies that include people with severe autism as participants had
Speaker 1: dropped sharply between the early and the early two thousand
Speaker 1: tents to only thirty and the article suggested that one
Speaker 1: reason this was happening is that scientists newly entering the field,
Speaker 1: as research funding began to go up, we're less quote
Speaker 1: comfortable with investing in more severely affected individuals, less comfortable
Speaker 1: with them. Wow, what a difference from how Lee O'Connor
Speaker 1: engaged with the kids he wrote about Donald and the
Speaker 1: others and the parents of those kids. And that matters too,
Speaker 1: because in almost every case pay are and so the
Speaker 1: main support system for their kids for their whole lives
Speaker 1: until they're gone. And then what when the parents are gone. Well,
Speaker 1: one last time, to Donald Triplett when his parents died.
Speaker 1: He had a community that had his back a lot
Speaker 1: of other advantages too, but without that community, his story
Speaker 1: would not have been such a happy one. So, Karen,
Speaker 1: let's close with our favorite story about community. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this is a story about an incident on a bus
Speaker 1: and a young man named Nicholas, whose autism was of
Speaker 1: the most challenging kind. He was not able to speak,
Speaker 1: and he found learning very, very difficult. But if he
Speaker 1: could learn how to use the bus system, that would
Speaker 1: open up his whole world. So for weeks, he and
Speaker 1: a teacher worked at learning how to use the public
Speaker 1: transportation system in a small town in New Jersey. And
Speaker 1: for days and days and days, he and the teacher
Speaker 1: rode back and forth on the same route as the
Speaker 1: teacher taught him how to ride the bus, and out
Speaker 1: of other people during that same time of day happened
Speaker 1: to be riding back and forth at the same time,
Speaker 1: so they saw these lessons going on, and the point
Speaker 1: came where things were going so well that Nicholas was
Speaker 1: able to sit alone on the front seat and ride
Speaker 1: the bus back and forth while his teacher watched from
Speaker 1: the back. And then one day, the bus came to
Speaker 1: a stop and two guys got on the bus and
Speaker 1: they sat down behind Nicholas, and they were not regulars
Speaker 1: on that route who had been watching this thing going
Speaker 1: on day after day. They sat down behind Nicholas, and
Speaker 1: as the bus began to move, Nicholas began to rock
Speaker 1: back and forth and to flip his fingers in front
Speaker 1: of his eyes. He was stimming, as they say, and
Speaker 1: he began to vocalize, and the reaction from the two
Speaker 1: guys sitting behind him, they began to mock him, and
Speaker 1: they began to lean into him and to bully him, like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? What's your problem? And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, this other writer from the bus jumped
Speaker 1: up and he looked at these two guys and he said, hey,
Speaker 1: what's your problem. He's got autism. Why don't you just
Speaker 1: back off? And the thing we think this story tells us,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing we saw happen in Forest. It
Speaker 1: shows that when a community leans in and and sometimes
Speaker 1: even goes more than halfway, it really isn't so hard
Speaker 1: to have the back of someone who's different. It's not
Speaker 1: that hard to provide the decency and support implied by
Speaker 1: the word community. It happened in forest, it happened on
Speaker 1: a bus, It can happen anywhere. I'm John don Van,
Speaker 1: I'm Karen Zucker. Autism's First Child is a production of
Speaker 1: School of Humans and I Heart Podcasts and based on
Speaker 1: our book and documentary film in a different key. Production scoring, mixing, mastering,
Speaker 1: and sound design by Alexander Ritchie. Our story editors are
Speaker 1: Matt Riddle and Alex French, senior staff writer at I
Speaker 1: Heeart Originals. Original score composed and mixed by Alice McCoy.
Speaker 1: Voiceover is by Louis Carloso and Missy Ritchie. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, el C. Crowley and Jason English.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Ray Conley, Ernie Indradot and Will Pearson.
Speaker 1: School of Humans