Read the story at TylerPaper.com.
BY VANESSA PEARSON
Jay Newman is a single father of two, Kyle and Cody. Together, they live in the corner of a brick apartment building off a busy Tyler thoroughfare, and a porch bursting with color, pineapple plants and garden decor.
Most nights, they, along with a handful of their neighbors, eat dinner as a family around a table set with pieces from Jay’s extensive china collection and filled with his cooking.
The nearly inseparable trio goes to the zoo, swims at the complex’s pool and shops around town.
Jay recently joined a gym to keep pounds on his wiry frame and loves cooking dinner for his sons and the neighbors.
The boys want to spend lots of time on their tablet computers and are described as big flirts. Kyle, 21, loves animals; horses are his favorite. And Cody, 17, is all-action — sports, cars, skateboards.
The brothers resemble each other so much that Jay took out a full-page ad in their school yearbook to declare “they are not twins.”
The Newmans may sound like a normal family, but they are far from it.
Kyle and Cody are autistic, both diagnosed near their first birthdays. Kyle has some brain damage and mild cerebral palsy; he’s had surgery that allows him to continue walking, but he will never run. Cody has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“I have gotten tired of labels a long time ago,” Jay said.
Both struggle with communication.
Even though today is Father’s Day, the boys won’t be calling him “Dad” — it’s always Jay.
“I think it’s easier for them to say,” Jay said.
Jay, 49, always has been the primary caregiver, and he’s been a single parent since 2007, when his wife left the family, he said.
Jay said he’s been told to put Kyle and Cody into an institution and walk away, but he refuses to abandon his children.
“There are good dads out there ... who will step up to the plate and take care of (their children) no matter what,” Jay said.
Jay is the product of a challenging childhood. His mother abandoned him at 18 months. His father spent decades in jail for the abuse he inflicted on him and his siblings, and Jay spent 12 years in the foster care system.
He works hard to make sure his sons have contact with the community and become part of the world around them through dinners and activities.
“Whether you see their value or not, I can. I see it,” Jay said, adding that some people think of his sons as “not whole people,” a drag on society, worthless. He wants them to be treated like anyone else.
“You don’t have a clue until you live it,” Jay said, tearing up while talking about the hardest parts of his past, pausing to remove his glasses and wipe his eyes.
ABUSED SON
Newman is not Jay’s birth name. He was born a “junior,” the sixth child of parents living at Camp Pendleton in California, where his father was a gunnery sergeant and whom Jay described as “not a good father but a good military man.”
“He was a sick, sick man,” Jay said.
Jay’s earliest memory was of his oldest sister trying to kill him. To her 8-year-old mind, drowning her toddler brother in the pond would save him from the abuse of her everyday life.
On Jay’s fifth birthday, he received a little blue pocket knife. As punishment for losing it, his father tied him to a cottonwood tree, which he is allergic to, and left him there overnight.
When he showed up for his second-grade class at Athens Elementary School with a handprint on his face — for the third time — he and his siblings were taken away from their father.
Jay said his father spent 37 years in jail for the physical, sexual and verbal abuse he inflicted on his children. His sentence was 12 1/2 years for the abuse of Jay and his sisters and another 25 years for abusing the children of a second family he started when he got out of jail. Jay’s father had been abused, so he thought it was OK.
Today, Jay has bad ears because his father hit him in the head so often. He said he had surgery to repair his eardrums.
“I blame my mother too,” Jay said.
His mother left the family when Jay was 18 months old.
“I can’t see why, for the love of God, you would leave your children,” Jay said.
When Jay and his sisters were removed from their father’s home, their mother wouldn’t answer authorities’ calls, abandoning them once and for all.
From 1972 until 1984, Jay was in 17 foster homes and went through nine failed adoptions. He said some of the abuse was as bad as being in his father’s house.
INVOLVED FATHER
Jay’s world revolves around his boys’ needs: their education, interests, lifestyle, daily living. He cares for them around the clock, save for their time at school.
The family has somewhat of a schedule. The breakfast routine is the same every morning: a banana, juice, cereal and yogurt for breakfast, then brushing their teeth and getting dressed. Fridays, they dine out, and then shop. Most Sundays, they have meatloaf; and each night’s dinner is intended to start about the same time.
But the rest can change somewhat without too many problems. Jay said he worked over time to ease them from being so tied to schedules. Now, they can go to Dallas for the day or do something new without much tumult.
But it’s not easy. Jay must remain vigilant about what would be the simplest tasks for most. Every time one of the boys uses the bathroom, Jay has to remind them of each step: Turn on the light, close the door, flush, wash your hands, both of them, turn off the light.
Sometimes, Kyle can forget how to do tasks he’s done many times before, such as the act of closing the car door.
“He just can’t remember,” Jay said.
Jay replaced all the doorknobs in the apartment with lever handles because Kyle could forget how to turn the knob and open the door.
If it’s hard to imagine forgetting the simplest of tasks, imagine not knowing who you are. Kyle didn’t for the first 19 years of his life. He could look into the mirror, staring at his reflection, and not be able to make the connection between the reflection and himself. Jay said it makes him cry when he thinks about Kyle’s inability to self-identify.
Even now, when Jay asks him, “Who is Kyle?” it takes a moment, his eyes flicked to the ceiling in thought, before he returns the eye contact, pokes himself in the chest and makes a sound of assent.
In his 30s, Jay had a heart attack from the stress of working a full-time job and being the primary caregiver for Kyle and Cody.
“The doctors said I needed to relax,” Jay said.
The family moved several times while the boys were young for Jay’s hospital food service career. Jay said the last night he worked was when a then-8-year-old Kyle had a late-night outburst that resulted in Jay leaving work early and Kyle hitting him with a wooden fence board, which required seven stitches. They moved to Corpus Christi, where Jay said he took care of people like Kyle and Cody during the day while his boys were at school for the next two years.
A Supplemental Security Income class program provides funds for personal assistance and habilitation hours for both of the boys. Both get eight hours a day, seven days a week, which allows Jay to hire help and work himself to take care of everything they need 365 days a year. The program also gives 30 units of 24-hour respite care, which Jay said he doesn’t use often.
About 11 years ago, he came home to Athens, where he bought a house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an in-ground swimming pool on a corner lot.
“I walked away from it,” Jay said. He had a bad loan, with payments going from about $365 a month to more than $800, he said.
But Jay described it as the “best thing I ever did,” getting away from Athens, because “all the bad in my life happened there.”
In 2007, Jay and his boys moved to Tyler for the Wayne D. Boshears Center for Exceptional Programs. Both attended Robert E. Lee High School for a time before they transferred.
Boshears is “the best place for them,” Jay said, adding that it’s a more restrictive environment where they are exposed to their “normal” peers — the school shares a campus, building and common areas with Jones Elementary School.
“The staff here is incredible,” he said. Everyone from the janitors up — “they all care about the kids.”
Jay is gregarious and friendly; all the teachers seem to know him and his sons and stop to talk with the trio at a school event in May.
Jay makes a point to ensure Cody practices his manners, often having to remind him to finish his thoughts or asking him what he should say, even prompting him to stand when he meets a young woman.
Cody does the best he can — he couldn’t talk until he was in fourth or fifth grade. Both boys’ communication skills are still growing, but Cody is the more talkative of the two.
Kyle doesn’t say much, but he’s paying acute attention to what’s going on around him. Jay calls him empathetic.
“He has to meet everyone,” Jay said.
At Boshears, the boys are involved in lots of activities, including Meals On Wheels, Therapet and equine therapy.
Kyle will turn 22 and age out of Boshears next year; he will graduate in the summer. Jay said his oldest son might start attending school only half days soon because his behaviors are increasing in the afternoon.
Jay is looking into local day habilitation services for Kyle while Cody continues school.
BUILDING A FAMILY
Nearly every night of the week, Jay’s neighbors fill the two-bedroom apartment for dinner, which normally Jay cooks.
Jay’s been cooking since he was a child; his first job was at Jacksonville Station at 14, wrapping potatoes.
The neighbors pitch in, sometimes bringing dishes or cleaning up afterward.
His chicken parmesan is the consensus favorite.
One of the things Jay works hard at is building a community for the boys. And it shows.
On May 27, the group grilled for a cookout. The boys sat on the couch among the neighbors, sometimes interacting, sometimes observing the bustle of food being arranged and rearranged. The brothers greet the newcomers, offering hugs to some.
“Every night, we chill,” said Heather Grubbs, who lives upstairs and is one of the people Jay employs to help him with the boys. They may be there for one hour or three hours, “just depends on how much fun we are having,” she said.
Neighbor Michael Kirkman is one of the newest additions to the dinner party. He moved in on April 1.
“Where can you move and instantly meet people?” he said.
“He feeds everybody,” neighbor Brenda Towery said. “It’s our village. … It’s just one big family.”
Jay wants a community feel and to know his neighbors. He waited 14 months for the apartment.
“This is my family here. … I want my kids raised right …” Jay said. “I’m 49; I won’t live forever.”
Brian Smith is Jay’s “go-to person” and lives across the complex. He helps Jay when he’s not working as a station agent for American Eagle Airlines.
“Everything he does — it is for the boys,” Brian said.
Brian is the one who stays with Kyle and Cody if Jay needs to go somewhere alone. He helps with “anything, everything,” including helping the boys bathe and with the housework.
Brian called the boys “the biggest flirts I’ve ever seen.”
“They are amazing,” Brian said, describing how they walk up to any woman, take her hand and say hello. “It’s fun to take them out” to eat and shopping.
Jay “doesn’t see the boys’ disability as a hindrance,” Brian said. “His little boys are always with him.”
A HOUSE OF LOVE
Jay’s constant vigilance goes hand in hand with his constant affection.
On a May afternoon, Kyle comes out of his room for a drink of water — his medicines make him very thirsty and he’s up six or seven times a night — and smiles down at his father, who is sitting at the dining table.
“Are you my baby?” Jay asks him.
“Yeah,” Kyle responds and leans down for a hug. Jay embraces him, planting a kiss on his cheek.
Then Cody arrives to insert himself into the moment. Soon, the boys have smacked each other and uttered syllables only the two of them understand.
Jay merely cocks a brow at his sons and quips, “And they’re boys; they’re brothers.”
Once they’ve disappeared into their room, his smile remains, as it often does when he speaks of them.
“I am lucky that God gave me kids for the rest of my life,” Jay said.
BY VANESSA PEARSON
Jay Newman is a single father of two, Kyle and Cody. Together, they live in the corner of a brick apartment building off a busy Tyler thoroughfare, and a porch bursting with color, pineapple plants and garden decor.
Most nights, they, along with a handful of their neighbors, eat dinner as a family around a table set with pieces from Jay’s extensive china collection and filled with his cooking.
The nearly inseparable trio goes to the zoo, swims at the complex’s pool and shops around town.
Jay recently joined a gym to keep pounds on his wiry frame and loves cooking dinner for his sons and the neighbors.
The boys want to spend lots of time on their tablet computers and are described as big flirts. Kyle, 21, loves animals; horses are his favorite. And Cody, 17, is all-action — sports, cars, skateboards.
The brothers resemble each other so much that Jay took out a full-page ad in their school yearbook to declare “they are not twins.”
The Newmans may sound like a normal family, but they are far from it.
Kyle and Cody are autistic, both diagnosed near their first birthdays. Kyle has some brain damage and mild cerebral palsy; he’s had surgery that allows him to continue walking, but he will never run. Cody has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“I have gotten tired of labels a long time ago,” Jay said.
Both struggle with communication.
Even though today is Father’s Day, the boys won’t be calling him “Dad” — it’s always Jay.
“I think it’s easier for them to say,” Jay said.
Jay, 49, always has been the primary caregiver, and he’s been a single parent since 2007, when his wife left the family, he said.
Jay said he’s been told to put Kyle and Cody into an institution and walk away, but he refuses to abandon his children.
“There are good dads out there ... who will step up to the plate and take care of (their children) no matter what,” Jay said.
Jay is the product of a challenging childhood. His mother abandoned him at 18 months. His father spent decades in jail for the abuse he inflicted on him and his siblings, and Jay spent 12 years in the foster care system.
He works hard to make sure his sons have contact with the community and become part of the world around them through dinners and activities.
“Whether you see their value or not, I can. I see it,” Jay said, adding that some people think of his sons as “not whole people,” a drag on society, worthless. He wants them to be treated like anyone else.
“You don’t have a clue until you live it,” Jay said, tearing up while talking about the hardest parts of his past, pausing to remove his glasses and wipe his eyes.
ABUSED SON
Newman is not Jay’s birth name. He was born a “junior,” the sixth child of parents living at Camp Pendleton in California, where his father was a gunnery sergeant and whom Jay described as “not a good father but a good military man.”
“He was a sick, sick man,” Jay said.
Jay’s earliest memory was of his oldest sister trying to kill him. To her 8-year-old mind, drowning her toddler brother in the pond would save him from the abuse of her everyday life.
On Jay’s fifth birthday, he received a little blue pocket knife. As punishment for losing it, his father tied him to a cottonwood tree, which he is allergic to, and left him there overnight.
When he showed up for his second-grade class at Athens Elementary School with a handprint on his face — for the third time — he and his siblings were taken away from their father.
Jay said his father spent 37 years in jail for the physical, sexual and verbal abuse he inflicted on his children. His sentence was 12 1/2 years for the abuse of Jay and his sisters and another 25 years for abusing the children of a second family he started when he got out of jail. Jay’s father had been abused, so he thought it was OK.
Today, Jay has bad ears because his father hit him in the head so often. He said he had surgery to repair his eardrums.
“I blame my mother too,” Jay said.
His mother left the family when Jay was 18 months old.
“I can’t see why, for the love of God, you would leave your children,” Jay said.
When Jay and his sisters were removed from their father’s home, their mother wouldn’t answer authorities’ calls, abandoning them once and for all.
From 1972 until 1984, Jay was in 17 foster homes and went through nine failed adoptions. He said some of the abuse was as bad as being in his father’s house.
INVOLVED FATHER
Jay’s world revolves around his boys’ needs: their education, interests, lifestyle, daily living. He cares for them around the clock, save for their time at school.
The family has somewhat of a schedule. The breakfast routine is the same every morning: a banana, juice, cereal and yogurt for breakfast, then brushing their teeth and getting dressed. Fridays, they dine out, and then shop. Most Sundays, they have meatloaf; and each night’s dinner is intended to start about the same time.
But the rest can change somewhat without too many problems. Jay said he worked over time to ease them from being so tied to schedules. Now, they can go to Dallas for the day or do something new without much tumult.
But it’s not easy. Jay must remain vigilant about what would be the simplest tasks for most. Every time one of the boys uses the bathroom, Jay has to remind them of each step: Turn on the light, close the door, flush, wash your hands, both of them, turn off the light.
Sometimes, Kyle can forget how to do tasks he’s done many times before, such as the act of closing the car door.
“He just can’t remember,” Jay said.
Jay replaced all the doorknobs in the apartment with lever handles because Kyle could forget how to turn the knob and open the door.
If it’s hard to imagine forgetting the simplest of tasks, imagine not knowing who you are. Kyle didn’t for the first 19 years of his life. He could look into the mirror, staring at his reflection, and not be able to make the connection between the reflection and himself. Jay said it makes him cry when he thinks about Kyle’s inability to self-identify.
Even now, when Jay asks him, “Who is Kyle?” it takes a moment, his eyes flicked to the ceiling in thought, before he returns the eye contact, pokes himself in the chest and makes a sound of assent.
In his 30s, Jay had a heart attack from the stress of working a full-time job and being the primary caregiver for Kyle and Cody.
“The doctors said I needed to relax,” Jay said.
The family moved several times while the boys were young for Jay’s hospital food service career. Jay said the last night he worked was when a then-8-year-old Kyle had a late-night outburst that resulted in Jay leaving work early and Kyle hitting him with a wooden fence board, which required seven stitches. They moved to Corpus Christi, where Jay said he took care of people like Kyle and Cody during the day while his boys were at school for the next two years.
A Supplemental Security Income class program provides funds for personal assistance and habilitation hours for both of the boys. Both get eight hours a day, seven days a week, which allows Jay to hire help and work himself to take care of everything they need 365 days a year. The program also gives 30 units of 24-hour respite care, which Jay said he doesn’t use often.
About 11 years ago, he came home to Athens, where he bought a house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an in-ground swimming pool on a corner lot.
“I walked away from it,” Jay said. He had a bad loan, with payments going from about $365 a month to more than $800, he said.
But Jay described it as the “best thing I ever did,” getting away from Athens, because “all the bad in my life happened there.”
In 2007, Jay and his boys moved to Tyler for the Wayne D. Boshears Center for Exceptional Programs. Both attended Robert E. Lee High School for a time before they transferred.
Boshears is “the best place for them,” Jay said, adding that it’s a more restrictive environment where they are exposed to their “normal” peers — the school shares a campus, building and common areas with Jones Elementary School.
“The staff here is incredible,” he said. Everyone from the janitors up — “they all care about the kids.”
Jay is gregarious and friendly; all the teachers seem to know him and his sons and stop to talk with the trio at a school event in May.
Jay makes a point to ensure Cody practices his manners, often having to remind him to finish his thoughts or asking him what he should say, even prompting him to stand when he meets a young woman.
Cody does the best he can — he couldn’t talk until he was in fourth or fifth grade. Both boys’ communication skills are still growing, but Cody is the more talkative of the two.
Kyle doesn’t say much, but he’s paying acute attention to what’s going on around him. Jay calls him empathetic.
“He has to meet everyone,” Jay said.
At Boshears, the boys are involved in lots of activities, including Meals On Wheels, Therapet and equine therapy.
Kyle will turn 22 and age out of Boshears next year; he will graduate in the summer. Jay said his oldest son might start attending school only half days soon because his behaviors are increasing in the afternoon.
Jay is looking into local day habilitation services for Kyle while Cody continues school.
BUILDING A FAMILY
Nearly every night of the week, Jay’s neighbors fill the two-bedroom apartment for dinner, which normally Jay cooks.
Jay’s been cooking since he was a child; his first job was at Jacksonville Station at 14, wrapping potatoes.
The neighbors pitch in, sometimes bringing dishes or cleaning up afterward.
His chicken parmesan is the consensus favorite.
One of the things Jay works hard at is building a community for the boys. And it shows.
On May 27, the group grilled for a cookout. The boys sat on the couch among the neighbors, sometimes interacting, sometimes observing the bustle of food being arranged and rearranged. The brothers greet the newcomers, offering hugs to some.
“Every night, we chill,” said Heather Grubbs, who lives upstairs and is one of the people Jay employs to help him with the boys. They may be there for one hour or three hours, “just depends on how much fun we are having,” she said.
Neighbor Michael Kirkman is one of the newest additions to the dinner party. He moved in on April 1.
“Where can you move and instantly meet people?” he said.
“He feeds everybody,” neighbor Brenda Towery said. “It’s our village. … It’s just one big family.”
Jay wants a community feel and to know his neighbors. He waited 14 months for the apartment.
“This is my family here. … I want my kids raised right …” Jay said. “I’m 49; I won’t live forever.”
Brian Smith is Jay’s “go-to person” and lives across the complex. He helps Jay when he’s not working as a station agent for American Eagle Airlines.
“Everything he does — it is for the boys,” Brian said.
Brian is the one who stays with Kyle and Cody if Jay needs to go somewhere alone. He helps with “anything, everything,” including helping the boys bathe and with the housework.
Brian called the boys “the biggest flirts I’ve ever seen.”
“They are amazing,” Brian said, describing how they walk up to any woman, take her hand and say hello. “It’s fun to take them out” to eat and shopping.
Jay “doesn’t see the boys’ disability as a hindrance,” Brian said. “His little boys are always with him.”
A HOUSE OF LOVE
Jay’s constant vigilance goes hand in hand with his constant affection.
On a May afternoon, Kyle comes out of his room for a drink of water — his medicines make him very thirsty and he’s up six or seven times a night — and smiles down at his father, who is sitting at the dining table.
“Are you my baby?” Jay asks him.
“Yeah,” Kyle responds and leans down for a hug. Jay embraces him, planting a kiss on his cheek.
Then Cody arrives to insert himself into the moment. Soon, the boys have smacked each other and uttered syllables only the two of them understand.
Jay merely cocks a brow at his sons and quips, “And they’re boys; they’re brothers.”
Once they’ve disappeared into their room, his smile remains, as it often does when he speaks of them.
“I am lucky that God gave me kids for the rest of my life,” Jay said.