[067]MEET A BUSY, REMARKABLE STUDENT, FATHER AND COMMUNITY ACTIVIST

MEET A BUSY, REMARKABLE STUDENT, FATHER AND COMMUNITY ACTIVIST

Inaugural Tennessee "Walk Now for Autism" will be held Sept. 13 at Nashville Super Speedway
Aug. 29, 2008
(Contact info below)
MURFREESBORO—Between school and family and chairing Tennessee’s inaugural “Walk Now for Autism,” MTSU student Ed Evans is a busy man. Evans has been involved with “Autism Speaks” for a little more than a year now, but he is totally immersed in helping this nonprofit organization. He has two good reasons … his sons, Joshua, age 11, and Jacob, age 6, both of whom are autistic.
Thus far, members of the Walk committee expect about 200 teams to attend and participate. Their efforts have raised more than $67,000 in sponsorships and pledges. The goal is $100,000.
“Walk Now for Autism” will take place on Saturday, Sept. 13, at the Nashville Super Speedway, beginning at 10 a.m. Lasting two hours, the event will culminate with a two-mile walk around the Speedway in a show of solidarity against autism.
As the chairperson of Tennessee’s Walk, Evans has been working with dozens of other committed volunteers to make sure the Walk exceeds expectations.
“I got an email from a friend who was out of state,” he said. “She told me there was an interest meeting that was going to be conducted at MTSU.” Evans said he thought “Autism Speaks” wanted to establish a chapter in Tennessee. He had no idea he was walking into the first planning stages for Tennessee’s inaugural Walk. Still, he immediately became enthusiastic about the idea of having a Walk, and shortly after that first meeting, “we had our own independent meeting to start organizing. I guess that’s about the time I emerged as the guy who was really going to take charge of it because nobody had the time or really wanted to take charge.”
Evans has been living with autism since his own son, Joshua, now 11, was officially diagnosed at the age of 3. Joshua is known as the lower functioning end of the spectrum. He can communicate but mostly only through gestures and facial expressions, or by taking your hand and showing you where he wants you to go—or by climbing up on your lap and laughing wildly when he is amused. Evans and his wife, Stephanie, must always keep a vigilant eye on Joshua because he can easily wander to the front door and open it without realizing where he’s going. Living with autism, Evans says, has not been easy.
Raising their younger son, Jacob, now age 6, hasn’t been much easier, but they have certainly learned from their mistakes. For instance, they were able to get Jacob into solidified therapy when he was around 2 1/2 years old. Whereas the military paid for most of Joshua’s therapies, many expenses for Jacob’s therapies have come out of his parents’ pockets.
“It gets very expensive,” Evans says. “You go to speech therapy twice a week, and that’s twenty-five dollars a shot, and that’s if you have insurance.”
As the future political advocate for Tennessee’s branch of “Autism Speaks,” Ed hopes to get in Congress’s face as often as possible.
“We’d never heard of autism, and you never really hear of autism until it happens to you,” Evans said. “You simply cannot understand what it is and what it does to you until you have felt the full brunt of the spectrum, and watched your child grow from cradle to crawl, from crawl to walk, from walk to talk, but not advance in the way you always thought he or she would.”
If anybody can express the plight of “Autism Speaks” and the plight of thousands of Tennesseans affected by autism, it’s Ed Evans.
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FOR AN INTERVIEW AND MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT EVANS AT 615-439-7379 or edevans43@comcast.net.
For a photo, please contact Evans.
Tom Tozer, directorMTSU News and Public AffairsFor news and information, visit mtsunews.com