Autistic Author Visits Tech
By: Stephanie Berzinski
Updated: October 21, 2009
Texas Tech welcomed two very inspirational speakers today. Lynley and Jazz Summers are authors of the book 'Autism Is Not A Life Sentence'. Jazz is now 19 and was diagnosed with autism as a child. Doctors told her mother, Lynley that Jazz would never be able to attend a regular school, that she'd never speak and would always have to wear a helmet. But thankfully, those doctors turned out to be very wrong. And thanks to her dedicated mother, Jazz is now fluent in Japanese, speaks all over the country as an advocate for folks with autism and other disabilties and majors in music and performing arts at the University of Central Arkansas.
"I wear my autism on my sleeve and I wear it with pride. I wouldn't want to be any other way," said Jazz Summers, a 19 year old autistic adult and accoplished author and speaker.
"That's the way family's with autism gotta take it. They gotta take it as a badge of honor", said Lynley Summers, Jazz's mother who is also diagnosed with a mild form of autism known as Asperger Syndrome.
For more information on autism and on the Summer's family please call the Burkhart Center for Autism at Texas Tech at 806-742-1998 or you can log onto www.burkhartcenter.org.
