Ahead of their time

WALPOLE -- Arnold Vetstein knew almost from the start that his young son Richard wasn't quite like other kids. He crawled in an odd way and repeated everything said to him. But it wasn't until his nursery school teacher called to report antisocial behavior that Vetstein realized his son's differences ran deeper than a few quirks.

"He was," Vetstein discovered, "oblivious to the world around him."

Today, Richard's autism would be readily apparent. But in the early 1960s -- when the disorder was poorly understood and often attributed to bad parenting -- unraveling the mystery was difficult.

So was educating Richard. The local public school "wouldn't touch him," Vetstein recalled, and several private schools threw up their hands. Vetstein, in an act of faith and desperation, started his own school.

Today, 40 years later, the Walpole-based League School of Greater Boston, one of the country's first schools for children with autism, is an established and thriving institution, educating 85 students who have a range of disorders on the autism spectrum.

The Vetsteins and another founding family, the Olins, were ahead of their time. In the rapidly changing field of autism treatment, the League School's founding philosophy of integrating academic and social learning to fulfill children's potential has endured. And the intensive intervention the school provided is now a widely accepted treatment.

Richard Vetstein, now 48, is testimony to the school's success. He lives and works independently in his hometown, and has a wide circle of friends. He is, he says, grateful to his school and proud of his role in it -- and of his own accomplishments. "I pay my bills, I pay my taxes," he said. "I have a successful job and my own apartment. I do my cooking, my cleaning, my laundry. I have my own life."

That was nearly unimaginable 40 years ago, if one accepted the standard view of autism.

"The Vetsteins saw something more in their child, knew their child was capable of greater things, but at that time society and schools couldn't help," said John Zbyszynski , the League School executive director. "So they did it themselves, which was incredibly gutsy."

To put the school's novelty in 1960s context, when it was founded, many autistic children were deemed mentally ill and institutionalized, Zbyszynski noted. Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, was virtually unrecognized. It would be another six years before a landmark special education law gave disabled children the right to attend private schools when their local school cannot meet their needs.

With few similar schools to emulate, Vetstein reached out to anyone with a connection to autism, including psychiatrists, social workers, teachers, and parents. They raised money through a network of friends, assembled a small staff, and began classes in two rooms in the Newton schools' special education building. Three students entered the school in November 1966, and the school rapidly expanded.

"We were very much in demand, because people had nowhere else to turn," Vetstein said. "And we wanted the parents to have a voice in running the school."

Donald Gair, a leading child psychiatrist who volunteered as the school's first medical director, said the school helped subvert the "common bias" that parents were to blame for their children's condition.

"It was groundbreaking in helping shift the balance away from the overstressed parental and psychological aspects of autism," he said, and it empowered parents to fight for better education for autistic children.

Gair, an emeritus professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, called his experience at the League School among the most gratifying of his career.

Today's League students, like Richard Vetstein 40 years ago, enter the school after unhappy educational experiences that often have soured them on learning.

"We have to build them back up, regardless of the level of functioning," Zbyszynski said. "We have to get them to like education again, and that philosophy comes straight from the school's earliest days."

How best to educate children with autism has generated debate, and controversy. Two other area schools have in recent months faced intense scrutiny for their methods. Several staff members at the Boston Higashi School in Randolph were recently found responsible for physically abusing a 14-year-old student several years ago. A Suffolk County jury awarded $2 million to the student's family. Another area school that teaches autistic children, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, has been criticized for its use of aversive shock therapy to correct misbehavior, including self-directed violence.

Parents can be desperate to find a method that works for their child, and when they do, they are deeply grateful. At a recent ceremony at the League School commemorating the anniversary, Arnold Vetstein spoke with a woman whose teenage son was unable to speak when he entered the school five years ago. Today, he is chatty, engaged, and doing well in his classes, Vetstein said.

"She told me she owed me a lot, which meant a great deal," he said. "It was a herculean task, and it was only because of our naivete and youthfulness that we took it on. I look back on it with a lot of pride."

Dania Jekel, executive director of the Asperger's Association of New England, has known Richard Vetstein for many years and says that if Richard had received treatment typical of the time, he might have required constant care all his life. Instead, he has developed the skills to live on his own, and "made himself a world he's comfortable in."

Vetstein works at Whole Foods Market as a grocery clerk. He is an affable, talkative man with a steel-trap memory and a strong vocabulary. Although his conversational style is rambling, and he rarely smiles or laughs, he makes eye contact and frequently asks questions.

He admits he has harbored some bitterness over his autism, which he said made "life harder for all my family." But he has come to accept it as "one of those things that happens in life."

He recalls the League School as a "very nice school," and a "good place for people with bad learning problems." He said the school was often tough but helped him develop social skills and self-reliance that prepared him for public school and, ultimately, adulthood.

"It was hard to get the hang of certain things, but I tried," he said. "I tried to discipline myself to do things that I had never done."

He acknowledged that "I had my moments" but, he said, "I thought I did pretty well." He added with pride: "They wouldn't have the school without me."

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.