Autistic child transcended boundaries

Autistic child transcended boundaries

Teen killed riding bicycle had an extraordinary mind

By Melissa Ludwig

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Tuesday, October 5, 2004

Zev Garfinkle's bar mitzvah was perfect. The 13-year-old read from the Torah with perfect diction, without stammering or slurring. Poised and calm, he behaved like the man he became that day, according to Jewish tradition.

A month later, Zev was hit by a car while riding his bicycle to McNeil High School, where the Deerpark Middle School eighth-grader took advanced math and science classes. Even with a helmet, Zev suffered severe head injuries, and he died Sept. 23, the day after the accident. Department of Public Safety troopers said the driver was not at fault.

In middle school, Zev stuck out like a parrot in the snow. He had a form of autism that garbled his speech and robbed him of social skills. An orthodox Jew, Garfinkle wore a kippah, or skull cap, and tzit tzit, ritual fringes, to school every day. He ate only kosher food his mother packed in a lunch for him.

But Zev's extraordinary brilliance and surprising wisdom touched people, said Sari Garfinkle, Zev's mother.

"He transcended any kind of boundaries," she said. "He could be really infuriating, but at the same time he left a really big mark on anyone who worked with him."

She said teachers, doctors and friends who had known Zev came from all over the state to see him in the hospital before he died. His funeral was jointly officiated by Yosef Levertov, a rabbi who practices the ultra-orthodox Hasidic form of Judaism, and Neil Blumofe, cantor of the town's conservative Jewish congregation, Agudas Achim. Christian pastors also attended.

Sari Garfinkle believes her son's legacy is to show what can happen when children with special needs are given the right tools to succeed.

"I think he opened a lot of people's eyes," said Barbara Murdock, Zev's special education teacher. "They are all amazed at the huge progress that he has made."

From birth, Zev had problems with speech and motor skills, Garfinkle said. At school in Boca Raton, Fla., Zev would throw tantrums that lasted for hours, she said. When the family moved to Austin in 1995, his problems continued. At age 7, a doctor diagnosed him with autism.

"I was thrilled," his mother said. "I am a big believer in meeting problems head-on, and you can't meet them head-on when you can't define them."

Once his parents and teachers began to understand what was going on in Zev's head, his behavior turned around, she said.

To control his environment, Zev clung to routine. He was a devout Jew and prayed three times a day.

Like many autistic children, he was sensitive to smells, sounds and touch.

For a whole year, he wore only red from head to toe, she said. Idiom and the delicate dance of body language and social niceties that most children learn effortlessly were utterly foreign to Zev.

"Do you know what the closest quasar to the earth is?" was Zev's standard opening line in a conversation.

"Small talk was completely lost on him," Garfinkle said. "He used to say that if he could make people into equations, he might be able to understand them."

Zev, who scored off the charts on intelligence tests, loved math and astrophysics.

"He was a pure and logical thinker," said Lori Ollmann, who taught geometry to Zev when he was in the seventh grade. "He had such a beautiful mind."

Zev began blossoming in school, Garfinkle said. Unable to sit in a regular class for more than five minutes in elementary school, Zev was attending a math class at McNeil that lasted an hour and a half -- and making the highest grades in the class.

His parents expected him to go to college -- Zev was set on Princeton -- and his classmates expected him to find a cure for cancer, teachers said.

This is the way his mother will remember him: "He was shining."