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Born deaf and autistic, New Haven man earns computer science degree from Albertus Magnus

New Haven Register - 6/4/2017

June 04--NEW HAVEN -- "Truck, Mommy, truck," are the sweetest words Andrea Cox has ever heard.

Those were the first words her son Lindburg Pender III ever said -- a feat multiple doctors and specialists said the boy would never accomplish.

And sure enough, Cox said, within a couple of minutes of his words, a tractor trailer had driven by the house.

"Those were the most beautiful words he ever could have said," Cox said.

Pender was born both deaf and autistic, a combination that his mother refused to let limit him in his life. And last month, she collapsed into bed after a whirlwind graduation ceremony at Albertus Magnus, where she got to watch her son, now 22, who was never supposed to even go to school, walk across the stage and accept a diploma for a bachelor's degree in computer information science.

"I did! He did it! We did it!" Cox said.

Saturday, Pender, who goes by "Snook" to his family, celebrated his college graduation, where he maintained a 3.0 G.P.A. A graduation party was held in his honor for his friends and family at his grandmother's house on Bristol Street.

"It felt thrilling," Pender said of walking across the stage to get his diploma at Albertus Magnus last month. "I wanted to prove something."

Pender said he chose Albertus Magnus for college because he wanted somewhere smaller where he could get more individualized attention from professors, given his autism. After making it through, he said, he's so happy he proved the naysayers wrong.

"Due to my mental illness, I felt like I was at a disadvantage, like I was less of a person," Pender said. "I wanted to prove something."

Pender's journey to the Albertus Magnus graduation began when his family first realized that he couldn't hear, no matter how hard they clapped to get his attention as a baby. It was around that time too that doctors told Cox that her eldest son was also autistic. Cox said she refused to accept that he would never learn to talk or get the education she wanted him to have, so she went to work.

"I refused to accept the fact that he couldn't hear," Cox said. "I believed he was going to speak."

The road was not always easy, learning to care for an autistic child that could not communicate as her other children could, and there were many tearful nights, she said. Doctors continued to poke and prod and tell her that Pender would never be able to speak because of his hearing impairment -- the family even began learning sign language -- but Cox never gave up.

"It was a struggle, but I did keep my faith," she said. "I kept believing and trusting in God... I knew there was a miracle coming."

She continued to take him to see doctors and try different methods to help him with his hearing, eventually letting a New Haven doctor put tubes in his ears that had no guarantee of helping.

Then came those first words when he was 4-years-old -- "truck, Mommy, truck." Adding the ear tubes had worked.

All through high school, Pender remained on the honor roll, Cox said. Even for him, C grades were simply unacceptable, she said.

"I'm so overwhelmed and proud," Crystal Lowery, Pender's older sister by 7 years said. "When he walked across the stage, he smiled like Oh my God."

Lowery said she has been inspired by her mother's dedication to making sure Pender succeeded and got everything he could out of his childhood, while also raising two other kids, Lowery, and her little brother Fred.

"He knows he has a great mom because she never gave up," Lowery said. "We, as a family, we stick together."

Absent from the celebrations Saturday was Pender's maternal grandfather who died six months ago. Linda Cox-McCoy, Pender's grandmother, said her husband had been a big part of Pender's childhood and had been looking forward to his graduation from college.

The family paid tribute to him Saturday by releasing balloons into the air in his honor.

"We are extremely proud of him," Cox-McCoy said of Pender. "He's done things we never thought he'd be able to do."

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