Autistic B.C. swimmer makes a big wave around Manhattan

Marty Klinkenberg
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, August 24, 2002

Traffic was crawling Thursday morning on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive on the East side of Manhattan, and Ben Kramer, the barefoot swimmer from Hornby Island, was doing the crawl beside it.

Drivers gawked out windows and tooted horns, not at one another but at barefoot Ben. Cyclists, joggers and dog-walkers stopped and stared. Residents of luxurious apartment buildings perched on balconies to watch the determined Canadian plowing headfirst into the swelling waves and swirling currents of the East River.

"I have seen those strong-man contests on TV and thought those guys were nuts,'' said Chick Barone of New Rochelle, who was following Kramer's progress from a seat aboard the private 15-metre yacht Marie's Mate. "But this guy has them all beat to hell. "

I wouldn't believe somebody could do this unless I saw it with my own eyes. Hell, I see it and I still don't believe it. The guy doesn't stop. He's a machine."

Kramer, a 46-year-old autistic man from British Columbia, has made the torturous swim around New York City 16 times to help raise awareness about the mysterious learning disorder, which afflicts one out of about every 250 children. Kramer, who grew up in Montreal, was 10 before he could speak and still clings to an obsession about not wearing shoes.

But he is treated now like a hometown hero in New York, where a year ago he completed the 29-mile swim through the East, Harlem and Hudson Rivers in nine hours, 34 minutes. On Thursday morning, everyone from CNN to the local network affiliates turned out to see him off on his Swim for Hope. WINS 1010, the city's all-news radio station, provided listeners with progress reports throughout the day.

"Ben is an inspiration,'' said Geoff Dabrowsky of Washington Township, N.J., the president of the regional chapter of Cure Autism Now. "He drives me to keep looking for an answer so that my son can speak one day."

Danny Dabrowsky will be seven on Sept. 3. His 19-year-old cousin, Heather, has been institutionalized as a result of autism for six years.

"My son has very little language skills, and every birthday gets more and more depressing for my wife and myself,'' Dabrowsky said. "But when Benny tells me it took him to 10 until he could speak, it gives us hope.

"The courage that Ben poses to attack his disability head-on is something to cherish."

A perplexing developmental disorder that usually strikes in the first three years of life, autism affects its victims' ability to communicate, express emotion and interact with others. It occurs in families from every class, culture and ethnic background, and is five times as common as Down syndrome and three times as common as juvenile diabetes.

The result of a neurological disorder that affects brain function, autism's symptoms can present themselves in a wide variety of combinations. Children with autism often appear relatively normal until the age of 24-30 months, when parents may notice delays in language, play or social interaction. Language develops slowly, and in some cases not at all.

"My son had stopped talking, had lost eye contact, and had started flapping his hands, and my wife and I knew something was wrong,'' said Andrew Baumann, president of the New York Families for Autistic Children. "Then he was diagnosed with autism, and we hit a brick wall. Everywhere we turned, there was no help.

"The only thing I knew about autism was what I had seen in Rain Man. I was afraid my son would be a Rain Man."

Baumann founded the New York autism organization in 1998 and its membership now boasts 3,500 families.

"When people hear Benny's story, how he has to fight his autism every day, he becomes an inspiration,'' Baumann said. "He is an amazing guy. He scuba dives, he's a world traveller, he's a mountain climber, he's a photographer. . . . These all are things that people with autism aren't expected to be able to do.''

A muscular man with shaggy hair and a dark beard, Kramer is a high-functioning autistic. He climbs massive fir trees on Hornby Island to feed and photograph bald eagles, and recently has taken to sleeping near them on a platform nine storeys off the ground.

Swimming, however, brings him his greatest joy, and it is also his claim to fame. Few people have ever swum around Manhattan, not only because of the distance, but also because of the tricky currents and questionable water quality in the East and Harlem Rivers.

"He swims through Hell's Gate, which is treacherous to navigate in a boat, let alone swimming,'' Baumann said, referring to the area where the East, Harlem and Hudson Rivers collide. "You catch the current there at the wrong time, and it will pull you out into Long Island Sound.

"And you don't ever want to swim in the Harlem River. It's filthy. There are dead rats floating in the water, needles and condoms. Kayaks stay close to Benny when he is in there so they can brush debris and stuff away from him.''

Ben Kramer learned to swim in a special summer camp in upstate New York, and for a long time he was afraid to put his face under water. Now, he straps on a pair of goggles and dives enthusiastically. He has done that in various locations across Canada, as well as in such places as Aruba, Brazil, Israel and Mexico.

"Growing up in Quebec, I would go to the edge of the ice and just plunge in,'' Kramer said. "I would go cross-country skiing, ski to the edge of the water, take my clothes off, jump in, get out, get dressed and go skiing again.

"Every time I drive by a beautiful lake, I want to swim in it.''

Nothing excites him as much as swimming around Manhattan, however, with the exception possibly of that time in the Harlem River when he swam into a dead dog.

"I love to swim around the big island,'' Kramer said. "I love swimming beneath all of the bridges, seeing the subway cars, passing the train yards in Harlem, looking up from the water and seeing all of the big buildings. When you swim in a lake, all you mostly see is forest and trees. Here you see so many interesting things.''

In past years, Kramer knew he was nearing the finish when he saw the World Trade Center.

"It's going to be very strange to swim and not see the Twin Towers there,'' he said earlier this week. "I'm still in shock over September 11. When I heard the buildings had collapsed, I didn't believe it. When it happened, I felt so bad. It hurt my heart so much.''

On Thursday morning, Kramer finished a flurry of interviews with New York TV stations, accepted a commendation from the office of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and then coated himself with grease to ward off the stings of jelly fish and to help keep up his body temperature.

Then, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop and the Staten Island ferry in his path, Kramer jumped into the Hudson River at Battery Park, only a scant few blocks from Ground Zero, and began swimming around the lower tip of Manhattan. Escorted by a safety boat, two kayakers and a New York City Harbor police vessel, Kramer found himself in the East River in no time at all.

Within a half hour he had swum past the South Street Seaport and the Fulton Fish Market and crossed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. And a little more than a half-hour after that, he was doing the breaststroke abreast of the United Nations, much to the entertainment of cars backed up in traffic on the FDR Drive. You could almost see drivers mouthing the words, "Hey, there's that swimming guy from the radio" as he kicked past. Soon, he was beneath the 59th Street Bridge -- about four miles from where he started -- and then the tide changed.

The current in the East River was flowing at more than a knot, which is extremely fast if you are trying to swim against it. With swim coordinator Paul Balsano and Anthony Cordero riding shotgun in yellow kayaks, Kramer hugged the shoreline in an attempt to get out of the current as much as he could.

For long stretches, he swam in place, and then the current became even stronger. The kayakers and safety boat had trouble making progress against the raging river, and a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, concerned for Kramer's safety, came closer to watch. Eventually, Balsano made the decision to pull Kramer out of the water.

A few minutes later, however, Kramer decided to be driven about 20 minutes up river, past the strongest currents, and then resumed swimming in the turbid Harlem River. There, he swam past Yankee Stadium, past rail yards and beneath bridges, where friendly construction workers cheered him on.

Cars honked a salute above Kramer as he swam beneath spans. A Circle Line tour boat, packed with passengers circling Manhattan, applauded him and then laughed when its captain chided Kramer by saying, "You would have gotten done a lot quicker if you took one of my cruises."

Five hours into the swim, Kramer swam past Spuyten Duyvel, at the northern tip of Manhattan, and re-entered the Hudson River. The George Washington Bridge was his next conquest, followed by the Cathedral of Saint John Divine. Then, quickly, one monument came after another: the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, then the Empire State Building. Kramer had been in the water 10 hours, and was still about two miles from Battery Park and beginning to fight the current in the Hudson, when the swim was called off.

It didn't happen the way the barefoot swimmer had hoped, but 25 miles in 10 hours in difficult conditions disappointed only him. While everyone loves a happy ending, Kramer didn't have to conquer Manhattan this time to win its heart.

Later Thursday evening, at a fund-raising bash at Antarctica, a tavern in Lower Manhattan whose owner has an autistic child, several hundred people toasted Kramer's effort.

The revellers included George Huard, a 43-year-old computer technician from Montreal. He is a longtime friend of Kramer, and is a victim of Asperger's syndrome, which has some of the same characteristics as autism.

"I'm happy for Ben,'' Huard said. "He has a sense of wonderment that a lot of people seem to have lost. He is like a fish; he gets in the water and it's hard to get him to come out.

"My hope is that by Ben doing this, it makes people more aware of what autism is, and that it causes it to be taken more seriously. Children need scientifically proven behavioural programs, teenagers need to be given the tools to learn how to socialize and to help them get through adolescence, and adults need vocational and residential help.

"Life is confusing for a person with autism."

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