Ethan Olaes seemed to disappear a couple of months shy of his second birthday.
When his father, Carm, rolled a tennis ball toward him, Ethan no longer smiled, no longer reached out for the spinning, fluorescent orb. He didn’t even look toward his father’s face.
“It was like we lost him,” Carm said.
Ethan, who goes by his middle name, was ultimately diagnosed as autistic.
His parents named him Carmelito Ethan Olaes, in part, so his initials would spell CEO. On Ethan’s first birthday, Carm penned Ethan a poem, promising unconditional love, but urging his son to live up to his initials and “find a $1 billion company to run.”
A neurologist tried to reset those expectations after the autism diagnosis, telling the Hudson family that Ethan could never work as a Wal-Mart greeter.
The Olaes family was devastated, but not defeated.
On Thursday night, Ethan — now 16 — took the stage at the Akron Civic Theatre, slipped behind a grand piano and unfurled everything from variations on Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon” to Journey’s rock classic Don’t Stop Believin’, music he studies at the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College.
His performance was part of the Autism Society of Greater Akron’s annual summit, aiming to create a community that nurtures those with autism.
Like many with autism, Ethan speaks fewer words than most people.
But Ethan, his family discovered, has perfect pitch, a rare auditory ability that allows him to identify or re-create any note.
Music has become Ethan’s language, a way for him to communicate and experience the world.
Fluent in music
A 9-foot Yamaha concert grand piano anchors the living room of the family’s colonial home in Hudson.
It doesn’t fit into their second home in Oberlin, a property they bought after Ethan began studying music at the conservatory. The family divides its time between the two homes, which are about 55 miles apart.
This week, emotion — something many with autism struggle to understand or interpret — seemed to pour out of Ethan and into his music as he played his Yamaha.
Ethan’s journey has been long, expensive and often uncertain, his family said.
“This is a marathon, not a race,” Carm said.
When Ethan was a toddler, his parents visited every doctor, specialist and therapist in Akron and Cleveland who thought they could help. Carm and his wife, Rowena, eventually decided that no one knew what was better for their son than they did.
Carm — a founding partner of Stratos Wealth Partners, a national investment advisory company based in Beachwood — went back to college, earning a certificate in autism from Kent State.
The Olaeses flew in two women from Hawaii who lived with them, working with Ethan to regain words autism had stolen.
Learning experience
The family home-schooled, adopting what many educators now refer to as “twice exceptional” curriculum, trying to bring meaning and purpose to everything Ethan was learning.
Carm, for example, bought a pool table for Ethan when he was about 7 and invited an old friend — Shane Ortega, who had won an amateur billiard tournament on the Game Show Network — to meet his son.
“Can you teach him?” Carm remembered asking Ortega. No, Ortega said, he didn’t know anything about autism.
But at Carm’s urging, Ortega spent an hour playing pinball with Ethan, who didn’t speak a word. Afterward, Ortega changed his mind about lessons.
“I felt we had a silent bond,” said Ortega, who quickly figured out that billiards, for Ethan, was less about bank shots and blind draw and more about language, socialization and coordination.
“This is a cue ball, can you say cue ball?” Ortega coaxed Ethan.
Lessons started several days a week, a few hours at a time and then ramped up to seven days a week, three or four hours each day.
Ethan was making slow progress. But when he was 8, he had an unexpected breakthrough.
Carm was in China on business when Rowena called him crying.
He could hear piano music in the background. It was Ethan playing Baby Mine, a lullaby from the Disney movie Dumbo, on the piano Ethan had watched Carm play.
Until then, the Olaeses had no inkling of Ethan’s musical talent.
Lessons at Oberlin
Ethan was about 12 when his parents found him a teacher at Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music, considered to be one of the top music schools in the United States.
Anna Park was a graduate student passionate about music and teaching.
“When we first worked together, I was mesmerized by Ethan’s potential,” Park said this week.
Ethan could see a score and, without hesitation, play it.
“Even many professional pianists cannot do that,” she said.
But teaching Ethan was not like teaching most other students.
Ethan, for example, didn’t respond to her coaching to play the piano softer, pianissimo, in parts of scores. Yet if she asked him to imagine a sleeping baby and then told him to play if he didn’t want to wake the child, something clicked.
Every day for two hours, Ethan and Park practiced. They would also take mostly silent walks until Ethan decided he wanted to communicate.
“He would memorize some songs and say the verses to me. ‘I like the way you smile’ or ‘I like the way you move,’ ” Park said. “He wanted me to know he liked me and it was very fun. He was making me a better teacher.”
High expectations
Watching Ethan blossom convinced the Olaes family that one-size-fits-all special education must change.
Claudia Olaes and Isabelle Olaes — Ethan’s two siblings, a senior and a sophomore at Oberlin High School — took that message to the Oberlin School Board in 2014.
Isabelle discovered special-needs children at her middle school spent much of their time of doing laundry, baking muffins and handling recycling at the school.
The Olaes girls told the board those activities did little more than save the school money because it didn’t have to pay staff for the work.
Instead, they argued, educators need to set high expectations for their special needs students and tailor curriculum to each child’s strengths.
“We have the opportunity here to change lives, to make a significant difference,” Claudia said.
It’s unclear whether their presentation changed anything.
But the Olaes family, which is writing a book, said they are determined to change special-needs education.
“I’m not an expert on autism, but I’m an expert on my son,” Carm said. “We hope Ethan’s story can inspire others.”
In the basement of the Olaeses’ Hudson house, Ethan now runs the pool table, sinking 15 balls in a row.
He’s also started running with Carm on the Oberlin campus, clocking a mile in just over five minutes.
Music, however, remains his focus, and he’s expanded beyond piano to play classical guitar, violin, cello and harmonica.
Anna Park, Ethan’s first music teacher, doesn’t see Ethan often anymore. She lives in New York City, but returned to Oberlin about a month ago.
Ethan will likely never attain the skills of Martha Argerich, widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists in modern times, she said.
Technique isn’t what makes Ethan’s music impressive.
“It’s better to think of him as a jazz pianist who can improvise at expressing himself and excelling at it,” Park said.
Ethan, she said, is so different from the shy boy she first encountered.
Last month, when Ethan learned Park would be in Oberlin, he canceled his piano lesson that day and held onto Park’s hand during dinner, smiling.
“He has an opinion and now he says what he wants to say,” Park said, even if it’s not always entirely in words. “I hope parents with autistic children see Ethan and see what a beautiful gift they could give the world.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.