Silent for years, now 10-year-old Ben Rushin can't stop talking

Editor's note: In Day 1 of the series, Ben stopped talking and began showing unusual behavior. Finally, after Ben didn't respond when firecrackers popped at his feet, Debby Rushin convinced her family she wasn't exaggerating Ben's problems.

By Bob Miller

and Callie Clark ~ Southeast Missourian

Ben Rushin can't stop talking about wrestling. Whether it's the WWE or the Jackson youth league, when you ask him a question, you may as well take a seat. It's going to be awhile.

The 10-year-old chatterbox has plenty of time to kill as the youth wrestling tournament slowly unfolds.

Ben screams advice to his Badgers teammates from the fourth row of the bleachers in the Jackson High School gymnasium.

He screams for younger brother Jackson, also in the championship, to get off his back, but those pleas go unanswered. Jackson, struck with the flu bug, didn't have enough energy. By the time the referee blows his whistle for the third round to end, Jackson is spent. And defeated.

In between matches, Ben talks about his path to the championship tilt, still half an hour away. On Thursday, Ben easily defeated his first tournament opponent 14-0. On Friday, he walked away with an 8-4 victory over a boy who beat him 11-3 and 3-1 earlier in the season.

Ben wrestled in the first grade, but didn't in second grade because of a lack of interest. In the third grade, he changed his mind and fell in love with the sport. But he had some catching up to do. He performed well, taking fourth place in this same tournament a year ago.

His start this year was a little slow, but he made rapid improvement. One milestone included his first pin. It took all of 30 seconds, but weeks later he recounts specific moves.

Richard and Debby give their son his space before Saturday's championship match. Richard occasionally checks in on Ben but spends most of his time over at the mats, helping coach the boys. Debby sits among a crowd of relatives across the wooden floor.

There was a time when Richard and Debby never would have left Ben alone in such an environment.

Balanced on a fence

On the Fourth of July in 1995, extended family members finally saw for themselves what Debby had been trying to tell them all along.

Ben, oblivious to danger, toddled into the vicinity of a handful of firecrackers. They popped off at the 18-month-old's feet, but he didn't react.

At first, Debby and others thought something might be wrong with his hearing. Debby took her son to a specialist to have it tested.

The tests came back negative. Ben could hear. If Ben was deaf, Debby and Richard at least could have found a way to communicate with him through hearing aids or sign language. But whatever was affecting Ben was something else, something bigger.

To Richard, it felt like his oldest son balanced precariously on a fence. While the family struggled to pull one way, something strong and unknown pulled Ben in the other direction. And so the tug of war for Ben's mind went.

The battle was especially frustrating for Richard, a detective accustomed to solving problems and catching culprits. But Ben's culprit remained elusive until Richard struck up a conversation with a man named Chuck Martin.

During the summer of 1995, Martin was director of the Easter Seals in Cape Girardeau, and Richard was organizing a law enforcement football game as a fund-raiser for the organization.

Richard shared Ben's symptoms with Martin, who immediately suggested an assessment of the 20-month-old at Easter Seals.

Easter Seals wasn't in the business of providing diagnoses, but it did offer assessments, therapy and direction to parents who didn't know exactly what was wrong with their children.

After several weeks of therapy at Easter Seals, a speech therapist worked with Ben for a day.

When Richard picked Ben up that day, he asked the therapist about Ben's progress and his potential.

"Oh, they haven't told you yet?" the therapist asked. She pulled Richard aside and offered her opinion.

As the words came out of the therapist's mouth, Richard's heart sank deeper and deeper.

"Ben won't be able to do normal things," she said. "He won't regain what he's lost."

Longed to hear his voice

At that moment, Richard lowered his expectations of his son. The former high school discus champ no longer cared about athleticism. The soft-hearted father no longer cared if Ben gave him grandchildren one day. All he wanted was to hear his son's voice again.

Shelly Stone was standing outside the therapist's room when Richard trudged through the door. Ms. Shelly has always been the type of teacher who adopts students as her own. She invites them to her home. She drives hundreds of miles across the state with parents for tests. She's the electrician who helps turn the lights back on.

Ms. Shelly took one look at Richard, and her heart went out to him.

What in the world did they tell him?

She'd heard the disheartening prognosis before, but her experience as a special-education teacher taught her that autistic children can make amazing recoveries.

Richard recounted his devastating conversation to Ms. Shelly. There was so much he wanted for his son, so much more than just sports, but the emotion came out in one oversimplified sentence.

"All I wanted was my son to play football," Richard sobbed.

Ms. Shelly explained the differing degrees of autism.

"Your son understands everything you say to him," she said. "And don't you ever forget that."

Shortly thereafter, Richard and Debby took Ben to a pediatrician in St. Louis for a formal diagnosis. Ben had Pervasive Development Disorder, or PDD, with autistic tendencies. PDD is one of four disorders under the autism spectrum.

Now, at least, Richard and Debby knew for sure what was tugging on the other side of the fence. A two-year string of frustrating trial and error followed.

Every day the Rushins would make the 15-minute trek to Cape Girardeau, past the waterslide for half-day sessions with Ms. Shelly at Easter Seals.

Ms. Shelly began trying to figure out what motivation, what techniques worked for Ben. The teacher and pupil began communicating with pictures. Ben soon learned how to get what he wanted by pointing to images.

At home, the frustration continued. When Ben got upset, presumably because he couldn't tell his parents what he wanted, he sometimes would punch himself in the face. The tantrums were heartbreaking for Richard and Debby, who didn't know how to help.

A disguised blessing

All of Debby's children occasionally developed ear infections, but Ben was the only one who couldn't tell her about it.

One evening, when Ben began bashing his head against the floor, Richard and Debby's last option was to take their son to the emergency room.

The emergency workers were not familiar with autism and couldn't understand why Richard and Debby kept answering questions for their son. They wondered why these parents brought their son to the emergency room and why they didn't know what was wrong with Ben. The doctors discovered that Ben had an ear infection.

The incident turned out to be a disguised blessing. Richard and Debby had a revelation that night. They had to open the communication lines somehow, even if it meant covering their walls with magazine clippings.

Debby went to work on Ben's picture posters. She put posterboards in different rooms throughout the house. On every one of them were dozens of pictures: shoes, hamburgers, ears -- any possible item that a child could want or hurt.

Life improved after that. But still no voice came from the little boy.

Along with Easter Seals, the Rushins also tried a deluge of special diets, vitamin supplements and therapies -- physical, occupational, recreational, music, speech, animal. There were weekly visits to a local chiropractor to align Ben's spinal cord.

There were therapists in and out of Richard and Debby's home almost nightly. They even tried feeding Ben special wafers imported from Florida as part of a recommended diet.

They were willing to try everything. Even at the cost of Ben's siblings. Ben's sister, Rachel, was old enough to begin extracurricular activities but didn't get to do all she could have. Richard and Debby were simply too tired and consumed to push their oldest daughter to try new things, to stick with sports.

The cost was draining the family bank account. Ben, through it all, remained silent. Having his fingernails clipped seemed to cause him great pain. It took one person to sit on him and hold him down and another to clip the nails to get the job done.

He disliked being cuddled and hated being kissed.

After two years of therapies and silence, Richard and Debby began to wonder if their oldest son would ever go to school. If the specialists couldn't reach Ben, how would he ever survive in a classroom with normal kids?

Accepted the silence

By the spring of 1997, 4-year-old Ben's silence was an accepted part of life for the Rushins. That acceptance took a dramatic turn during an after-school shopping trip. Debby loaded the four children and her younger sister into the family's Aerostar van, seating Ben directly behind her.

They headed to Cape Girardeau on U.S. 61, a routine trip Ben had taken hundreds of times on his way to Easter Seals and therapy sessions. As they sped past Johannes Auto Sales, descending into the valley, from the rear of the van came an unfamiliar voice.

"Waterslide."

Debby hit the brakes.

"Who said that?" she asked.

From the back seat, three children chimed, "It was Ben, Mom, it was Ben."

Debby immediately brought the vehicle to a halt on the road's shoulder. Scores of cars continued to speed by, but life inside the van stopped.

Oh my God. Ben talked.

It was a voice she thought she might never hear again. She looked back at her son, his face distorted by her tears.

bmiller@semissourian.com

243-6635

cclark@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128