Picking a Person/People of the Year

The process of picking a person/people of the year is always one that is in the back of our minds throughout the year. As we go month to month staff members here at Spectrum will sort of point out “this is person of the year worthy, let’s see what else they do.” By the time November rolls around we’re asking our advisory board, made up of advocates and professionals in the autism community, what they think. Then we’ll ask readers as they call into our office to re-up on subscription or this year we’re using Facebook.

The truth is, it’s never easy. To date we’ve made four different selections, beginning with Shelley Hendrix-Reynolds in 2004 with all her contributions to the autism community through Unlocking Autism.  In 2005, we chose author David Kirby for his release of the book Evidence of Harm and all the subsequent work he had done throughout the year, bringing attention to the potential environmental factors. Deirdre Imus, wife of famed radio talk show personality Don Imus, was our pick in 2006. Along with all of her work in greening the environment, Dierdre took on the task to advocate in Washington D.C. with parents of children with autism. She fought all year to get the Combating Autism Act passed and when it was stalled and the language changed to not include research into the autism/vaccine link she stood on her beliefs. In addition, Dierdre made sure that the topic was always discussed on her husband’s program. In turn, the Imus family became a big part of autism awareness in 2006.

In 2007, the death of Jonathan Cary, child from upstate New York, at the hands of the O.D. Heck school prompted his father Michael and wife Lisa to become advocates for those that did not have a voice. Because of the Careys, Jonathan’s Law was passed, which allows all parents to have the right to look at school records when it concerned their child. We followed the story all year long and were proud to named them our People of the Year for 2006. We picked another family in 2008. Hannah Poling became the face of the Autism Omnibus cases, backed by her parents. The Polings were the first family to talking about the Vaccine Court process and now famous line of “Hannah showed autism like symptoms” after receiving vaccines echoes in all of our minds. Thanks to the Poling family the autism community had restored hope in the vaccine/autism link theory.

So as you can see the title of People of the Year has big shoes to fill. So we don’t take the process lightly. We’re currently narrowing it down to a handful of people, but in all fairness we won’t make a final decision until the Thanksgiving break and unless someone does something monumental in December, we’ll stick to our first choice.

So I know many of you have suggested people of the year on Facebook, but feel free to comment below and let us know what you think.