Presvytera Melanie DiStefano: Welcome to Family Matters: Fully Human Edition. This is Melanie DiStefano, and today I am joined by Trevor Wallace. Trevor is a recent high school graduate. He attends St. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Webster, Massachusetts. He just graduated as valedictorian of his class from Shepherd Hill Regional High School, and next year he plans to attend Tufts University to study physics. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome when he was four years old. Welcome, Trevor!

Mr. Trevor Wallace: Hello!

Presv. Melanie: You recently graduated high school with many honors, including being class valedictorian. I watched a video of your speech, and that’s how I got wind of who you were, when Fr. Luke Veronis posted it on Facebook. The first thing you did before giving your speech was to remove all the medals you had received, because, as you said—and I’m paraphrasing—you wanted people to see who you really are. Can you explain what you meant by that action?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah. So I thought about how I was going to start my speech for kind of a long time, because I already knew pretty much from the get-go that I was going to end my speech with the Serenity Prayer, but as I was writing it and as I talked to Fr. Luke, I really wanted to make sure that everything— Well, everything I did right at the beginning, I wanted people to be drawn right away into what I was saying. I didn’t want people to listen to me start the speech off nice and cliché and then kind of zone out and then something interesting happens right in the middle of it. Do you know what I mean?

Presv. Melanie: Yep!

Mr. Wallace: I wanted to make sure that what I did at the beginning was captivating. Initially, as I said at the beginning of my speech, I had thought that me and my friend Gabe, who was the salutatorian—I had thought that [he and I] were going to get a medal or a sash or something that said that on it, and my original idea was to take that sash off, not the other stuff, just for me to take that one off, the sash that said “valedictorian” on it. And when [he and I] were sitting at our senior awards ceremony, and we were getting all our stoles and medals and what-not, [he and I] were sitting there, like: Why have we not gotten anything yet? And then everything ended, and I asked my friend who was the valedictorian last year, and they were like: Yeah, you don’t get anything.

So initially I was not happy. Like I said in the speech, I was not happy. I was like— I spent all this time getting all these good grades and what-not. Why don’t I get a medal? Then I kind of thought about it for a long time, and I was like: Well, what do I want to say in my speech? Nobody cares that I’m the valedictorian, really; that’s not what my speech is about. Who cares if I got a nice medal? And it kind of clicked in my head just then. I was like: That’s perfect! I’ll tell them that, and then I’ll take all my other medals off, and then I’ll start my speech from there.

Presv. Melanie: Well, it definitely did get my attention. [Laughter] I loved it.

Mr. Wallace: Thank you.

Presv. Melanie: It was definitely captivating and drew you in. So you also mentioned in your speech a lot about your early years, like the therapies you received over the early years, to help with communication and learning social cues because of having Asperger’s. What kind of therapy did you receive, and when did it start for you?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah, most of that started when I was very young. I don’t really remember a ton of it. There were a couple of bits and pieces I remember. I remember there was this one therapist I went to that—we would play Legos at, and I remember all the Lego guys didn’t have heads, because people would eat the Lego-guy heads. I just remember that there were Lego guys with no heads. [Laughter] One of my speech therapists at my school, I remember she had a deck of cards that were all idioms, and we would learn the idioms, and I would just go home and say all the idioms! [Laughter] I remember there was one music therapist thing, and I remember there was a set of headphones and there was an mp3 player, and you had to stand on this balance board and listen to the music.

So I kind of remember everything very fragmented, because most of it was when I was younger to really remember anything specific. So honestly I have no idea how any of that really shaped who I am today, but I know that it was important, and I know that it was something that was really important to my parents to make sure that I got that type of assistance.

Presv. Melanie: Were you verbal when you were diagnosed with Asperger’s?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah, definitely. I was too verbal. [Laughter] That was part of the issue. My favorite pastime was going up to people anywhere in public and telling them that now we were playing Spongebob, and I was going to be Patrick and they were going to be Sandy, and we were all going to play Spongebob together—at the grocery store, at the beach, or wherever we were! [Laughter]

Presv. Melanie: That’s adorable! I love it. So what was most challenging for you growing up?

Mr. Wallace: I guess trying to figure out what was and what wasn’t socially acceptable. Like, it’s not socially acceptable for me to go up to someone at the grocery store and ask them to play Spongebob with me, but maybe if I was playing Spongebob with my friends, that would be acceptable. So it kind of took a long time for a lot of that to really click in my head and really figure out where my puzzle piece kind of fits into the social scheme.

Presv. Melanie: Do you still have struggles with that, like discerning social cues or figuring out what’s appropriate in social circles?

Mr. Wallace: Sometimes. I would say no more than any other person would, at this point in my life, now that I’ve worked through a lot of that. I’ve had the opportunity to work on my social skills, through those therapies and just through normal interactions with people and through the jobs I’ve held in food service, at Dunkin’ Donuts and Panera Bread. That is… [Laughter] It sounds kind of funny, but those have been really important, I would say, in helping me figure out how all that stuff lines up.

Presv. Melanie: Absolutely. Just as a young person, thinking back to when I was your age, I really didn’t know a lot about those social cues, being out in the world. So having a job in retail was really important to start learning those things.

Mr. Wallace: Exactly.

Presv. Melanie: How did you find out about the Orthodox Church?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah, so Fr. Luke’s daughter, Panayiota, I kind of… I’m not sure exactly where I started. I guess my junior year of high school, my mom had always kind of pressed me, ever since I was— before I was even in high school: “Oh, Trevor, you should run track. Oh, Trevor, you should join the track team. Oh, Trevor, you have the very build to run track.” And I’d always be like: “Nah, I don’t really want to do that. I don’t really like running.” [Laughter] Eventually I got to a point, after COVID, where I was like: You know, maybe I should try track. And, believe it or not, my mom was right, as it usually goes. [Laughter]

But, yeah, I made friends with this one kid who was friends with this other kid, who was friends with Fr. Luke’s daughter. Our little friend group just started to get closer and closer, and then come Pascha Sunday last year, Fr. Luke’s daughter and her friends were like: “Oh, you should come check out the Easter service. It’s not—” Because I grew up in an Episcopal church, and my family kind of drifted away from that, as me and my brothers got older, as we had more time to play sports and hanging out with our friends and what-not, and then COVID happened and everything kind of got shut down. So I was kind of missing that church aspect of my life.

So they were like: “Oh, Trevor, you should come check out the Easter service,” and I was like: “Hmm. Maybe I should go check out the Easter service.” So I went, and it was beautiful. I loved it, and I loved that church. I stepped into that room, and I could just immediately feel a very warm energy in the atmosphere, I guess is the best way to put it. But I loved it.

And then kind of the year went on. I stepped back away from that. I didn’t really know when I should or shouldn’t go back to the church. I didn’t really know if I exactly belonged there. And then Fr. Luke’s daughter and her friends, they went off to their church camp for the summer, and I was like: “Hmm. I’m going to go check this out.” So last summer was when I started going to this church. It was around this time, actually, that I pretty much started going every Sunday. And I’ve been going every week since then pretty much.

Presv. Melanie: Beautiful.

Mr. Wallace: Yeah.

Presv. Melanie: So what advice or lessons learned would you like to share with young people who have a similar diagnosis, who are diagnosed with Asperger’s? Maybe they’re experiencing similar challenges.

Mr. Wallace: I guess the best advice I have is that if you really put your mind to doing anything, you can do it. If you have the drive and you have the energy, and if you have the will to focus yourself and plan out what you’re going to do, there’s really nothing that would stop you from doing anything, especially in this world and in this day and age, the technology, where you pretty much have access to anything at the tips of your fingers. There’s really no limit to what you can do in the world.

Presv. Melanie: You do have a positive attitude, that’s for sure.

Mr. Wallace: [Laughter] Thank you.

Presv. Melanie: I love it. I love it. The sky’s the limit for you. It’s beautiful.

Mr. Wallace: Thank you.

Presv. Melanie: You’re welcome. You shared in your speech, your valedictorian speech, that you and your father prayed the Serenity Prayer. Has that prayer shaped your family life? Or how has prayer in general shaped your family life? How do you think it’s helped you through your school years?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah, I guess a lot of the reason that I chose to include that prayer is that my family life has kind of been a little shaky recently. My parents are negotiating a divorce, and my dad hasn’t been living with us any more. So as I was kind of thinking about how I wanted to end my speech, what I wanted [was] something powerful that I could say—powerful not only to the people that I don’t know that were listening, but also that I knew would be very, very impactful on me and my family when I said it. That’s kind of why I started to choke up when I said that prayer, because that was what my dad said to me and my brothers every night growing up, and that was kind of a piece of my life that got pulled away when he moved out. So that prayer I thought was something that really tied everything all in together, about the superpowers and about making change in the world and about using our superpowers to make change in the world. That was kind of what I thought was a pivotal piece of the speech and everything that I had to say.

Presv. Melanie: Absolutely. I’m so sorry about your family situation. I wasn’t aware.

Mr. Wallace: It’s all right.

Presv. Melanie: I’m sure it’s not easy for you. So let’s go back to the superpowers. Talk a little bit about what you said in your speech about the superpower thing.

Mr. Wallace: Yeah. So I guess the beauty of what I kind of interpreted the superpower thing to mean is that it can really mean anything to any person. And what I really tried to do in my speech and what I thought came across pretty well and what a lot of people have communicated to me is that there was something in that speech that really spoke to a lot of people that listened to it. There were a lot of people that reached out to me that had children or siblings or parents or whatever that were on the autism spectrum and were able to connect to it that way, but there were other lines here and there that people were just able to pull something out of.

I think the beauty of the superpower is that it’s what you make of it. Your superpower is what you want it to be and what you can kind of transform that to mean in your personal life and how you can use that to impact people in your own special way. So that’s kind of what I thought of with the superpower as I tried to extend my personal situation and allow other people to apply it in their life where they saw fit and where they saw it to be the most impactful on themselves and on other people.

Presv. Melanie: That was powerful.

Mr. Wallace: [Laughter] Thank you. Superpower is what you want the superpower to be: that was what my point of it was.

Presv. Melanie: Right. So we have potential—

Mr. Wallace: Exactly.

Presv. Melanie: And not to squash that potential, but just to use it.

Mr. Wallace: Yeah. And actually—I just thought of this—last Sunday I spoke— I gave a sermon at our church service. Fr. Luke asked me to speak. I kind of tweaked my valedictorian speech a bit, so I could keep the same themes, but touch upon it in a different way, in a different manner, and keep it more focused on a church. And what I talked a lot about was the line from the book of Genesis that says we’re all created in the image and likeness of God. So I likened that to say that God is the ultimate superhero. God is the ultimate superhero of this world and of beyond this world. If we’re all created in the image and likeness of the ultimate superhero, then we all have our own type of superpower in some type of way that we can apply in some type of way to have some kind of positive impact on the world.

Presv. Melanie: Yes! Perfect. I was impressed with your sensitivity when you spoke about people who may not have had the same opportunities as you or the same gifts of speech, like people you were in therapies with or in school settings with. And if there’s a time that something switched in you when you realized that you had been afforded blessings and opportunities that others may not have.

Mr. Wallace: I’m not really sure if I could pinpoint any exact point, but I know looking back there was a summer camp that I used to go to pretty much every summer with my mom, and sometimes my brothers would come on, too. It wasn’t like a stayover thing; it was more like a family camp, for families of kids that had autism or other developmental disorders. Looking back at that and even thinking when I was there in the moment, I could pick up on the fact that other kids around me didn’t have the same capacity to communicate and to learn to socialize that I did. And especially now that I’m older—I’ve grown up, I’ve grown out of a lot of the little quirks that I had when I was younger—I can look back and say, “Oh, those kids truly did not have the same blessings that I did.” Granted, they’re all blessed in their own special way—that’s what makes it a superpower—but really and truly they wouldn’t have been able to talk on that stage about their superpowers because they didn’t have the same gift of communication that I was blessed with.

A lot of what I wanted to touch upon with those lines in my speech was thanking my parents. Kind of in an indirect way, I wanted to thank my parents for what they invested in my life, what they put me through, and what they helped me with through things like that, that helped me to be the person that I am today.

Presv. Melanie: I got that subtle underlying message as well. Is that what you’re most grateful to your parents for?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. Pretty much sticking with me, believing in me, and then doing what they could to help me be the best version of myself.

Presv. Melanie: When you have a diagnosis of Asperger’s, what do you think are some common misconceptions out there?

Mr. Wallace: I don’t know. The one thing that kind of sticks in my mind—this is the only time that I can even think that I was, I don’t know, targeted in some way: I was in third grade, I think, and we were walking down the hallway; me and my best friend were walking down the hallway. And we were in third grade, so he didn’t know any better, but we walked by this girl that was walking with her aide in the opposite direction. The girl had Down Syndrome. And I remember my friend tapping me on the shoulder, and he was like: “Yo, do you know what the same thing is between you and that girl?” And I was like: “What?” And he was like: “Special ed.” And that just stuck with me. That stuck with me since third grade, which was ten years ago. That it just didn’t click in his head. Granted, he was in third grade, but it just didn’t click in his head that, A, you shouldn’t say that, and B, we really are all the same; we really do have a lot of the same things in common, even if we look different, even when we go through different treatments, different therapies, different background situations, different developmental behaviors. I don’t know. That was the one thing that really stuck with me.

Presv. Melanie: Yeah. Did you feel hurt at the time, or was it just something that kind of didn’t sit well with you?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah, it more so shocked me, because I guess at the time I didn’t really think anybody thought anything of anything that I did. I guess I thought people didn’t really pick up on it. I figured people didn’t really notice when I left class to go to my speech classes and what-not. I didn’t really pick up on something, like other kids my age would be like: “Oh, that kid’s weird. What’s he doing? Where’s he going? Why does the aide always take him out of class?” That was kind of a thing that clicked in my head where that happened, and I was like: “Oh. Maybe I’m not the same as all the other kids.” Do you know what I mean?

Presv. Melanie: Yeah, I do. But I like that you’ve kind of grown in the self-assurance that you are the same and that we are all the same. I like how you phrased that. We may have different needs and different gifts, but that we are all the same. I don’t know, that doesn’t come out of thin air. Where did that come from, Trevor?

Mr. Wallace: I don’t know!

Presv. Melanie: Did your parents instill that in your, or was that just something over the years you sort of grew into?

Mr. Wallace: I’m not sure.

Presv. Melanie: Okay.

Mr. Wallace: Maybe it was a gift from God.

Presv. Melanie: Yeah. It’s impressive, honestly, for a young person. I really appreciate it.

Mr. Wallace: Thank you.

Presv. Melanie: So. You’re going to go and study physics at Tufts. How do you plan or hope to use your talents as you go off to this next chapter in your life?

Mr. Wallace: Yeah. One thing I really like about Tufts, one thing that really drew me in there from the get-go and led me to make my decision to attend there was that they really encourage their students to branch out and look at a lot of things that are beyond their initial educational interests and take classes in every kind of subject that they can possibly think of. They pride themselves on their liberal arts curriculum and the fact that they want kids to take X semesters of every class that there is, more or less: take six semesters of foreign language, as well as your degree requirements.

I know that whatever I end up doing my first year or two there, I have no idea if I’m even going to end up sticking on a physics pathway. Maybe I’m going to discover a love for something else. So that’s what I really like about Tufts. But right now I’m looking to explore a lot of their research opportunities in physics and just within the STEM field in general.

One of the things that’s really caught my eye in the past year or so alone was genetics and biophysics, kind of the physics of biological mechanisms, which is something that we touched upon in my biology class, and me being the person I am, I was like: “Mm. Wish I knew more about that.” I like when I can ask a teacher a question and they say, “You know what, I’ve never had a student ask me that before.” [Laughter] I’ve had a couple of moments in my bio class this year that led me to be like: “You know what? I bet you I could find a professor that would help me find the answer to this in a laboratory somewhere.”

Presv. Melanie: Absolutely. Wow. Keep searching. Keep going for it. Soon you will be chrismated into the Church. There are plans for it as well.

Mr. Wallace: Yeah.

Presv. Melanie: So we’ll be praying for you. And with that chrismation, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are enlivened according to our theology. So with all your gifts, I can’t wait to see what happens in the future for you, and just pray that you have doors open and that God just continues to lead you.

Mr. Wallace: Thank you so much.

Presv. Melanie: You’re welcome. It’s been a blessing to talk to you today, Trevor.

Mr. Wallace: It’s been a blessing to talk with you as well. I’m grateful that I’m able to share my story with so many more people.

Presv. Melanie: Thank you.