Donald Gray Triplett was an American known for being the first person diagnosed with autism. He was first diagnosed by Leo Kanner and was labeled as “Case 1”.
Donald Triplett’s parents: Meet Beamon Triplett & Mary Triplett
Donald was born in 1933 in Forest, Mississippi, to Beamon and Mary Triplett, a lawyer, and a school teacher, Donald was a profoundly withdrawn child, who never met his mother’s smile, or answered to her voice, but appeared at all times tuned into a separate world with its own logic, and its own way of using the English language.
Donald could speak and mimic words, but the mimicry appeared to overtake meaning. Most often, he merely echoed what he had heard someone else say. For a time, for example, he went about pronouncing the words “trumpet vine” and “chrysanthemum” over and over, as well as the phrase: “I could put a little comma.”