A grass-roots effort to ease suffering
Artist, groups aim to improve life for those with autism
When Hurricane Harvey washed away artist Grant Manier’s speaking engagements, book drive and invitations to teach in local schools, he didn’t want to sit at home.
So he launched a J.J. Watt for President campaign. Well, unofficially. The 22-year-old with autism, who has earned awards for his creations made with thousands of recycled-paper shreds and recently published a children’s book, donned a red J.J. Watt for President T-shirt his mother bought him a while ago and got to work helping people devastated by the storm.
Much like his favorite Texans player.
“What he’s accomplished is exactly what I expect from him,” Manier said of Watt, whose hurricane-relief fundraising efforts have generated nearly $30 million. “He’s a golden boy.”
Watt has taken notice, sharing Facebook posts of Manier at work, always in his Watt for President T-shirt.
The artist and his mother, Julie Coy, live near Cypresswood and Texas 249. Though Cypress Creek stopped just short of their home, their area is a flood zone — since they can’t generate income, FEMA granted them economic injury funding.
With work on hold, mother and son have been heading in their “Grant Van Go” to distant houses that need cleaning and distribution centers to collect or deliver sensoryfriendly items to others with autism. Unlike Manier, many aren’t faring well post-storm.
“We need help in the specialneeds community,” Coy said from the road. “... We can’t sit back and watch people suffer.”
For those with autism, that suffering is taking the form of selfinjurious behaviors born of the
stress of strange people and sounds in their environments or, for those in shelters, adjusting to an altogether new environment with few supports in place.
Autism Rescue Angels, a nonprofit serving Fort Bend, Montgomery and Harris counties, is working to alleviate what it can.
Among the 100 or so families ARA has helped was one who reached out when a member started biting herself because a comforting piece of technology, a tablet, had been forgotten when they fled, according to Lisa Graham-Garza, president and founder.
Though “some just needed an iPad replaced,” others lost everything and have sought money to cover a hotel room until their insurance kicks in, Graham-Garza said. Autism Rescue Angels’ website froze the Sunday and Tuesday of the storm because of demand.
Good old grass-roots teamwork across individuals and groups will make the difference, said Graham-Garza, who met up with Manier and Coy at a fire station in Katy. Her outfit had paid for water and cleaning supplies the duo would use.
Staples, which has sponsored Manier’s work, agreed to further his crusade by providing noise-canceling headphones, battery chargers and the like for stormaffected individuals with special needs. And earlier last week, Manier and Coy picked up noise-canceling headphones from the Houston Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities and delivered them to Hope for Three, an autism organization in Stafford.
Similarly, a new group, the Greater Houston Autism Coalition, is working to match the needs of those with autism or other intellectual and developmental disabilities with donated goods.
Connections across autism groups at the local level also helped get a handful of families out of shelters. ARA worked with Katy-based Camp Journey to get Kendra and daughter Cat, a teenager with autism, out of the George R. Brown Convention Center because the stressed-out Cat had started hurting herself.
“Nobody’s asking to be refunded for gas money or anything,” Graham-Garza said. “I think it’s the survivor guilt kicking in.”
Now the focus is starting to shift. Eighty percent of the requests are for help with housing, so Autism Rescue Angels is keeping a list of people whose needs are longer-term, such as housing with a kitchenette “because their child only eats a couple of things,” Graham-Garza said.
Organizations with broad reach, such as the Autism Society of Texas, are working to finish the “triage of immediate needs” — food, clothing, donated tablets and sensory kits, executive director Suzanne Potts said. Easter Seals and 60 volunteer therapists are meeting a variety of needs for evacuated autism families the society is serving in Houston, League City, Port Aransas, Bastrop, Dallas and more.
And once FEMA’s temporary housing assistance and the Red Cross’ disability-integration teams move on, the society’s local partnerships still will be on deck.
“We’re going to be here,” Potts said. “We haven’t begun to know the full effects of Harvey.”
Potts acknowledged her outfit is navigating areas it doesn’t typically handle, such as housing. Her group found a seemingly suitable apartment for one family, who refused to leave a medical shelter because it would’ve meant giving up pets.
“It’s about maintaining a sense of control” when they have so little, Potts said. And so the family remains in the shelter.
Manier remembers what convention centers such as the George R. Brown were like when he was younger and just starting to show his artwork. It took him about a year and a half to adapt to the noise, the stream of people coming up to talk, look him in the eye and shake his hand — all of which made him uncomfortable. A year and a half — and he was there voluntarily.
On his cleanup missions, he hasn’t run across anything he can recycle in a piece of art — paper is wet and ruined. But he plans to get back to his calling soon, creating a manger for the wise men he’s completed, along with promoting his book, “Grant the Jigsaw Giraffe,” about a giraffe who’s born different but has a team of animals supporting him to become an eco-friendly artist.
To those still displaced, Manier shared what he’d tell his younger self if he could: “Don’t worry. It’s all going to get better from here.”
Especially if he can create Watt’s campaign signs.