From the intro to a story in the Salt Lake City Tribune:MURRAY, Utah - Matthew Pond (pictured with his wife) memorized Dr. Seuss' Hop on Pop when he was 2, but as he got older he couldn't name the color of Little Red Riding Hood's cape. He could speak, but he often repeated what he heard others say. He avoided eye contact.
When Pond was diagnosed with autism almost 30 years ago, his mother, Debbie Pond, kept her expectations high: She told a parent support group she wanted him
to attend school, make friends, go on an LDS mission, fall in love and raise a family.
"[The parent leader] slammed his hand down on the desk and said: 'You guys need to get real. Your son will never do these things,' " she remembers.
She explains this while sitting with Pond and his wife, Leann, in the couple's town house. Pond served an LDS mission, works as an armored truck guard, has an associate's degree and plans to get his bachelor's.
His level of success is rare, according to University of Utah researchers who recently tracked down adults who were diagnosed with autism from 1960 to 1984 and had higher scores on intelligence tests as children.
Nevertheless, the researchers and his family say Pond can offer inspiration in a state with a higher-than-average rate of autism, a disorder marked by unusual behaviors and difficulty communicating and interacting.
"We thought that could provide some hope," says William McMahon, chairman
of the U.'s psychiatry department, who is overseeing the study and is director of the Utah Registry of Autism and Developmental Disabilities. "We wanted to find out, at best, what can you tell parents about what their children might become 20 years later."