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Antonio’s Pizza in West Pittston reopening original location and will operate two stores

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Happy birthday to Blake Ryneski!

<p>When Dr. Daniel W. Rosenn started seeing young patients, he was as alone in his field of study as the children were in their diagnoses.</p><p>The pediatrician relocated to the Boston, Massachusetts area from a Navajo Indian reservation in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico and turned his focus to child psychiatry.</p><p>&#8220;It suited me better,&#8221; said Rosenn, 73, a Wyoming Valley native and son of the late Judge Max Rosenn of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.</p><p>Rosenn&#8217;s interest in the mother-child relationship carried over into his new practice and he asked to be assigned the most difficult of children to reach.</p><p>That led to groundbreaking work in the identification and treatment of people with Asperger Syndrome and for that Rosenn is being honored this month. The Asperger/Autism Network named its conference, scheduled Oct. 23-24, The Daniel W. Rosenn Annual AANE Connections Conference. A permanent endowment has also been created in his name.</p><p>Dania Jekel, executive director of the Watertown-based AANE, describes Rosenn as a &#8220;pioneer&#8221; in the treatment of Asperger patients beginning approximately 20 years ago.</p><p>&#8220;When Asperger&#8217;s was first identified, pretty much nobody knew about it,&#8221; Jekel said. She credited Rosenn with advocating for patients and their families and educating them, the public and medical professionals about the syndrome. &#8220;That makes a huge difference in their lives,&#8221; Jekel said.</p><p>A graduate of Wyoming Seminary and Stanford Medical School, Rosenn recalled his first patients &#8220;didn&#8217;t fit any diagnostic category.&#8221; He eventually felt they had a mild form of autism.</p><p>His research led him to little-known papers published decades apart, one in 1943 by Hans Asperger of Vienna, Austria and the other in 1981 in London, England, that aided in his study.</p><p>Asperger wrote about kids with characteristics Rosenn was seeing in his patients and the woman psychiatrist who wrote the London paper named the syndrome after Asperger, Rosenn explained. &#8220;When I found it, I was thrilled,&#8221; he said, because the information enabled him to move his diagnosis closer to autism than the schizophrenia some professionals were leaning toward.</p><p>However, it was difficult to attract support from his peers.</p><p>&#8220;People were not receptive at first,&#8221; said Rosenn. Still, he persisted, encountering more people with the disorder. It was a lonely pursuit for approximately 10 years and he was &#8220;a voice in the wilderness,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Eventually, his work gained acceptance and patients were included in the autism spectrum. The Centers for Disease Control has identified one in 68 people have autism spectrum disorder.</p><p>&#8220;We started an organization back in the 90s, the Asperger&#8217;s Association of New England,&#8221; Rosenn said. The organization has grown and since been renamed the AANE with an annual conference that has featured such notable speakers as the late author and neurologist Oliver Sacks. Keynote speakers for the upcoming conference are Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Ron Suskind and English Autism Spectrum Conditions specialist and consultant Sarah Hendrickx .</p><p>Rosenn said he was honored with the naming of the conference for him and reflected on the long-running annual lecture series in honor of his late father. The judge&#8217;s former law clerks, his former law firm Rosenn, Jenkins &amp; Greenwald, family and friends created the Max Rosenn Lecture Series in Law and Humanities that has been held at Wilkes University since 1980. Among speakers have been authors David Halberstam, Norman Mailer and Bob Woodward, former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and pediatrician, author and educator Dr. T. Berry Brazelton.</p><p>&#8220;I felt like I was in good company,&#8221; Rosenn said of the honor.</p><p>Rosenn and his wife, Barbara, a psychologist, have three children and three grandchildren. He is in private practice in Wellesley and on the staff of McLean Hospital, the largest psychiatric affiliate of the Harvard Medical School.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Rosenn </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/web1_dan_rosenn-bw.jpg</photo0><caption0>Rosenn </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jerry Lynott</p><p>jlynott@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>To learn more about the conference and contribute to the endowment visit: <strong>www.aane.org.</strong></p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLNews</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Conference named after former Wyoming Valley resident Dr. Daniel Rosenn