Sussex valedictorian can't speak, but her words inspire millions. Here's her story

BYRAM — At just 24, Elizabeth Bonker is already a published author, poet and lyricist. Rock stars record her songs. The Sussex County native has also become a highly sought-after public speaker, after her graduation speech at Florida's Rollins College became a viral sensation this spring.

Her comments have captivated, inspired, resonated. And she's done it without ever uttering a word.

Bonker has a form of autism that has prevented her from speaking since she was a year old. Now, the Byram woman, who was valedictorian of her graduating class, hopes to help millions of other nonspeaking people worldwide find their voices as she did.

Earlier this year, she founded Communication 4 ALL, a nonprofit whose mission is to promote training in one-finger typing for others who share her condition. An estimated 40% of people with autism are nonspeaking, according to the group's website, yet relatively few have been taught to communicate in this way. The term "nonspeaking" includes people who speak unreliably or say the same word or phrase repeatedly, in addition to those unable to speak at all.

As she did at the Rollins graduation, Bonker "speaks" via a text-to-speech computer program, typing out her thoughts one letter at a time with her index finger. The computer converts the message into a clear, Siri-like female voice. At her family's Bridge Trail home for a recent interview, she sat calmly at her laptop and pecked away. In other settings, like her multiplying public appearances, her mother, Ginnie Breen, is by her side, holding an iPad for her daughter to type on.

"Growing up with no way to communicate is a trauma no one should ever have to face," Bonker said. "Think of a stroke victim — you understand everything going on around you, but people keep speaking like you aren't there."

'Locked inside a body that's betraying them'

Bonker's condition came on suddenly. She stopped talking at 15 months and spent years frustrated at her inability to convey her needs and desires to those around her. Her parents tried in vain to understand a child who was suddenly unable to speak. Ginnie and her husband, Ray Bonker, were forced to guess what their daughter wanted or what was bothering her, since autism took away the motor skills needed to gesture or use any kind of sign language.

"You're trying to guess, 'Why is she crying?'" Breen said. "Any other child could say, 'My stomach hurts' or 'my head hurts' or 'my tooth hurts.'"

Approximately 1 in 44 children in the United States is diagnosed with autism, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The advocacy group Autism Speaks estimates that about 40% of people with the disorder worldwide, or 31 million total, are nonspeaking.

"There's no other way to describe it other than it's a sort of grieving," said Ray Bonker, who is also a councilman in Byram Township. "These are kids who are locked away inside a body that's betraying them."

For Elizabeth, that began to change when she was 6 years old. Her grandmother saw a "60 Minutes" segment about Soma Mukhopadhyay, an Austin, Texas, mother who taught her autistic son to communicate by pointing to letters.

A turning point in Texas

Breen reached out to Mukhopadhyay, and she and her daughter began flying down to Texas for weeklong lessons, once a month over the course of half a year. Elizabeth started out selecting from a group of written answers and progressed to spelling out words. Improvement was slow, but within a year, she was able to express herself, her parents said.

"It wasn't this magic thing that happened all of a sudden," her father recalled. "You drill a lot of dry holes trying to find a gusher at some point."

Once she was able to communicate, Elizabeth entered public school in Byram, followed by two years at Lenape Valley Regional High School in Stanhope. She completed high school at the online Laurel Springs School after the family moved to central Florida once her brother, Charles, graduated from Lenape Valley.

Though she thrived in school, Bonker said she was "haunted by the eyes of those nonspeakers I left behind in the autism classroom." She began to write poetry, and a collection of her work alongside commentary from Breen was published by Baker Publishing Group in "I Am in Here" in 2011.

In "My Plan," a 13-year-old Bonker declared her ambitions:

I have a plan

To make a stand

For people like me.

Someday you will see.

The book details her life with autism and challenges misconceptions about the nonspeaking community. One of the most common is that autism is a cognitive disorder affecting the brain, when it actually affects neuromotor control of the body, Elizabeth Bonker said.

"We cannot always get our bodies to obey our minds," she said. "We are thinking the words we want to say, but we can't get them out of our mouths. There is so much work to be done to change the way the world sees nonspeaking autism, so everyone has a voice."

Finding that voice through her keyboard, Bonker began writing song lyrics in addition to her poems. After about 20 songs, she decided to put together an album. Boston-based band The Bleeding Hearts, whose members are friends of her mother, heard about the girl's songwriting and volunteered to set her words to music.

Rage against the cage

She formed another musical partnership with Tom Morello, the Rage Against the Machine guitarist and a former classmate of Breen's at Harvard. Morello learned of Bonker's writing from her mother at a college reunion, and he and The Bleeding Hearts recorded her lyrics in a song titled "Silent Cage."

Welcome to my silent cage

Can you feel my simmering rage?

The world thinks I got nothing to say

They want me to stay that way

After high school, Bonker followed her brother, Charles, who also has autism but can speak, and enrolled at Rollins in Winter Park, Florida. Breen praised the college for focusing on her daughter's academic abilities and treating her like any other student.

Bonker majored in social innovation, minored in English and compiled a 4.0 GPA, making her one of five valedictorians the school honored in the spring. The other four selected her to give the commencement address in May.

At the graduation, Bonker strode to the podium with Breen by her side. Her speech, which she typed out before the event, urged graduates to live their lives in service to others in the spirit of another Rollins alumnus, television icon Fred Rogers.

"God gave you a voice. Use it," her computer intoned, as Bonker stood at the podium, looking only slightly nervous.

"And no, the irony of a nonspeaking autistic encouraging you to use your voice is not lost on me. Because if you can see the worth in me, then you can see the worth in everyone you meet."

Bonker concluded with a quote from Alan Turing, a British mathematician who helped break Nazi encryption codes but was later persecuted for his homosexuality in postwar England: "Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine," she said. The crowd erupted in a standing ovation at the end of the address.

Bonker called the moment a "great honor." It was a milestone in both her personal journey and for spreading the word about Communication 4 ALL, which she founded in April.

"It meant so much to me because I wanted it to be part of my mission to change the way the world sees nonspeaking autism," she said. "But I never dreamed it would change my life in the way it has."

'Saving a soul'

The speech exploded online. Communication 4 ALL said the video has appeared more than 4 billion times on social feeds worldwide. ABC News and National Public Radio covered the story, and donors including Google and Rotary International have offered to help grow her initiative.

The organization's goal is for every person with autism to achieve full communication by learning how to type, and Communication 4 ALL aims to empower schools and families to teach nonspeakers across the country. School districts in Illinois and Florida have signed on for pilot programs, Breen said, and the group is in talks with others. Bonker hopes that one day every school in the country will have accommodations for nonspeakers just as they do for blind and hearing-impaired students.

Bonker and her family now split their time between Byram and Florida. She has thought about returning to school for a master's degree in public policy to advance her efforts. For now, she said, her focus is on running and expanding Communication 4 ALL, which continues to pick up support.

Her lofty plans no longer surprise her parents. Breen called her daughter "the most persistent person that I know."

"Every single person that gets communication, she calls it 'saving a soul.' She counts every single one of them," her mother said. "This is her life mission."

Bonker has met hundreds of nonspeakers through her activism. Now, she hopes her newfound fame will help others escape their own silent cages.

"All civil rights movements are a long march, so I expect it to take more than my lifetime to fully achieve," she said. "My message for nonspeakers is to hold on. Help is on the way."

For more information on Elizabeth Bonker's group, visit communication4all.org.

Kyle Morel is a local reporter covering Morris and Sussex counties.

Email: kmorel@njherald.com; Twitter: @KMorelNJH

This article originally appeared on New Jersey Herald: Elizabeth Bonker speech: NJ nonspeaking autism woman inspires