Suzanne Wright, a co-founder of Autism Speaks, a charity that fights for people living with autism and teaches the care and management as well as support research, died on Friday at her home in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. She was 69.
The cause of her death is reported to be complications of pancreatic cancer.
Ms. Wright took on autism as a cause after her grandson, Christian, stopped speaking when he was two and a half years old and soon received a diagnosis of autism. No one, she found, could adequately advise her and her husband, Bob Wright, on how to help her grandson Christian. “We knew nothing about it,” Ms. Wright said in an interview with CBS News in 2011. “I said to Bob, ‘How could this be, that nobody is talking about autism?’”
They founded Autism Speaks in 2005. Initially, Ms. Wright said, they struggled to find broad support because so little was said about autism, but she guided Autism Speaks toward a receptive audience. “The women of the world got it,” she told CBS. “They understood that autism was a global health crisis.”
Ms. Wright did a lot of good work on support for autism through Autism Speaks, she created the Autism Speaks logo, a blue jigsaw puzzle piece, which reflect how adrift and disconnected autism patients and their families could feel. She also spearheaded a campaign to promote recognition of autism by adorning buildings and individuals with blue lights.
“Suzanne was a critical part of all of this because she was the one who had this incredibly deep, emotional response to the problems, she’s just a warrior.” her husband said in an interview.
Autism Speaks had total revenue of more than $57 million in 2014, the most recent data available.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by three daughters, Maggie, Catherine and Sarah Wright; a son, Christopher; a sister, Jayne Tobin; two brothers, James and Dennis Werner; and six grandchildren.
‘Support for people living with Autism is a worthy cause’.
