Who is Arthur Lonegan?

Arthur was born in Hackensack Hospital in NEW JERSEY IN February 1998.  By the time he was 2 ½ his parents knew something was wrong.  He was not pointing or talking and eye contact was fleeting, if at all. By the time he was three years old doctors said he had autism.

For two years Arthur received early intervention at home, his parents turning their dining room into an occupational therapy studio.  From five to age ten, Arthur attended a series of out-of-district specialized autism schools where he received Applied Behavioral Therapy in classes of six students and four teachers.  While ABA helped address certain behaviors and taught Arthur to sit and attend, he was not advancing academically.  At ten years old, he still could not talk in complete sentences. Worse, he hated going to school and seemed to be heading into depression.

In 2007, his parents moved to Montclair, N.J., because it had a good reputation for fully including kids with developmental delays in general education classes.  School administrators and Arthur’s parents agreed upon a plan where he would start attending the school’s self-contained ABA classroom but would gradually attend the regular fourth grade class starting with an hour a day.  Well, on the first day, after an hour, his teachers told Arthur it was time to leave.  He refused and from then on he was fully included in fourth grade.  Within a few months Arthur was talking in sentences.

For the next seven years, Arthur attended school with his peers.  To be sure, he was far behind in reading, writing, and math, but his teachers modified the curriculum and adopted the materials so that Arthur could study the same topics as his classmates, just at a level easier for him to comprehend. 

Like all kids, High School was a period of tremendous emotional and intellectual growth for Arthur.  He loved going to school, even if he hated math. His classmates were compassionate and supportive and assured that Arthur was centrally involved in all classroom activities.  In fact, his classmates called him “the Mayor.”  As graduation approached, however, the question was what Arthur would do when his classmates went to college.  Again, Arthur’s parents made the hard choice to relocate.

Graduation was barely over when Arthur and his parents moved to Rockville, Maryland after the Department of Homeland Security, Arthur’s fathers’ employer, allowed him to transfer to Washington.  Maryland has a robust system for vocational development opportunities for young disabled people, and the Maryland Department of Vocational Services has approved Arthur for funding for vocational training through Jewish Social Services Agency starting in July 2019.  Arthur is also a volunteer three days a week at the Rockville Police Department where he provides clerical assistance.