College employee shatters stereotypes of people with autism

Sanders retiring after 30 years on the job

By Mara Stine

The Gresham Outlook, Oct 26, 2010, Updated Oct 26, 2010

Mike Sanders was just 6 when psychologists told his mother he’d never hold a job, live on his own, or in short, amount to anything.

That’s what makes his retirement after 30 years at Mt. Hood Community College such an achievement.

“They said I was ungovernable,” says Sanders between deliveries in the campus mailroom. His mother disagreed. She successfully lobbied the Legislature to ensure that her son, and other children with disabilities, were guaranteed access to quality education.

And that mother with the “ungovernable” son? She went on to become the first woman governor of Oregon.

“It was hard to believe a time like this would ever come,” says Mike’s mom Barbara Roberts. “But I always knew he had capabilities. It was a matter of patience and training and believing in him. But one job in 30 years? I don’t think I would have ever thought that. I’m really proud of him.”

She was 19 and living in Texas with her husband, who was in the Air Force, when Mike was born in 1956. He was an easy baby and content. But he avoided eye contact with people and didn’t want to be touched or cuddled.

As he grew, Mike developed quirks. He’d make strange hand gestures when nervous or distressed. His speech skills were delayed.

But the boy was smart and had a great sense of humor.

“He could read before he was 3,” Barbara says.

Mike was just a toddler when his family moved to Portland. There educators declared him too disabled to teach and expelled the first-grader.

Nobody used the term autism, which today is known as a broad spectrum of brain disorders. Patients can range from highly intelligent individuals to those who can’t speak.

‘Severely emotionally disturbed’

But back then, Mike was merely labeled retarded, or “severely emotionally disturbed,” as his mother recalls

“They said he’d never be able to go to school, hold a job, live alone or take care of himself,” Barbara says, adding she was advised to place him in an institution. “And they were the so-called experts. That was basically the diagnosis — put him away. Thank God I didn’t.”

Instead, she enrolled Mike in a cutting-edge program that strived to teach children like him to function in the world. For three years, he lived at the Parry Center for Children in Southeast Portland, spending time at home with his family on the weekends.

He moved back home when he was 9 and the timing was perfect. His family had settled in Parkrose, where the school district just started a federally funded class for children such as Mike to see if they could function in a classroom setting.

“The Project,” was a success.

And parents couldn’t imagine the three-year program coming to an end.

That’s when Barbara — by then a divorced mother of two — teamed up with then state Rep. Frank Roberts. Together, they passed landmark legislation that not only ensured a public education for children with disabilities, but also funded it.

Along the way, Barbara and the state representative fell in love. They eventually married.

Meanwhile, Mike entered the sixth-grade at Sacramento Elementary School and graduated from Parkrose High School in 1975.

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