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A PARTY FOR 14-YEAR-OLD 'MAYOR OF DENVILLE'

The Neighbor News - 6/21/2017

Lesley Butler refers to her 14-year-old son, Patrick or Packey, as "the Mayor of Denville."

She's not the only one.

Denville's school bus drivers wave to him as they pass his house. School children stick their arms out of the bus windows and yell hi to him.

"He struggles with social interaction and language," Butler said of her son, who is autistic.

Difficulty with social interaction and communication are key aspects of autism spectrum disorders, according to the advocacy group Autism Speaks.

Once a week Butler picks her son up at Valleyview Middle School and they stand at the bottom of the hill on Diamond Spring Road to watch the "parade" of buses go by.

Packey knows each driver by name and they know him.

"It's quite a day," said Butler. "The kids are sticking their hands out the windows and waving and screaming and yelling. Nothing makes him happier."

But it wasn't always that way. Packey's mother said she noticed her son's high level of stress as early as age 3. That's the time she also noticed buses eased that stress. When her oldest son would be dropped off by the school bus, Packey would look out and look relieved, Butler said.

"Buses were the first thing that he took an interest in, so we indulged him," she said. But she didn't just indulge him, she had the idea to use this newfound interest to draw him out and help him with the socialization he found so difficult.

Packey made a routine of waiting for buses, not just his brother's bus, but any school bus. Butler said because their home is on Franklin Road in the middle of town, all of the buses pass their house.

"It worked out really nicely," she said. "When we moved into this house, to me that was the biggest flaw, that we were on this busy, busy road. I did not want to have kids here. Lo and behold, it turned out to be a blessing. He fell in love with what was driving down our road."

Each day, Packey waited and watched. Then he learned the bus numbers and their schedules. He watched each of the town's 32 buses as they rotated and went back and forth bringing children to and from Denville's three schools. Each day they started with the middle school and then the elementary schools.

He wasn't trying to be social or even get their attention until mom stepped in. If he was going to sit out in the driveway and watch the buses go by, Butler said she wanted to incorporate a social component to it. She told him to wave to the buses. She rewarded and encouraged his social behavior with trips to the school district's bus garage.

Butler said Transportation Supervisor Dan Cotreau "was kind enough to embrace these quirks that Packey has" and gave him all of the bus trivia he could handle.

By the time he enrolled in middle school he was starting to have conversations with bus drivers whenever he saw them outside of their buses. Bus driver Stacey Greenhangen worked in the middle school lunchroom between her morning and afternoon bus routes.

"If he saw me in the hallway he would stop dead in his tracks and call my name and we would have a conversation," said Greenhangen.

But through the years the affection became a two-way street. Greenhangen described what it has been like for bus drivers seeing Packey on the side of the road for the last decade.

"He would stand outside and wait for us to come by so he could smile and wave at us," said Greenhangen. "I could be having a horrible day, but when I see that child standing there in the rain, sun or snow, it could be 100 degrees outside and he was standing out there waiting to wave. It makes all of your troubles seem like nothing."

All of this was helping Packey, too, just as Butler said she had hoped it would. He was now approaching people and starting conversations, mostly bus drivers. Then the bus drivers' kids and even the children in school have warmed up to Packey through all of this.

Butler said now everyone wave to him around town. June 20 was the last day of school. Packey will find himself in a new school district when he starts at Morris Knolls High School in the fall. With this in mind, Denville's bus drivers wanted to do something nice for Packey.

"It started as just an idea that a few of us wanted to give him a certificate of appreciation for all of those years of standing outside waiting for us to come by so he can wave to us," said Greenhangen.

There was such enthusiasm for the idea that it escalated into a party for Packey held in the bus garage where they presented him with gifts including flip-flops with buses on them, a backpack with his name on it and a bus on the front as well as a poster that pictured all of the district bus drivers.

"We wanted to show him how much he meant to us," Greenhangen said. "When they came in, his mom was crying everyone was overjoyed."

Greenhangen said Packey was so excited that he created a spontaneous roll call yelling out each bus number to the crowd before him with each driver yelling "Here!" when Packey got to their number.

"He really is like the mayor of Denville," Greenhangen said.