The modern multiplicity of teenage troubles: anxiety, depression, learning disabilities, overstuffed schedules, social media, self-medication, drugs, alcohol, all of that.
So said a father, resolved and knowing, about his son who had struggled with many of the above, but who came through on the other side, ready to alter the bumpy course of his short life. Then, sober for about a year, living independently, about to return to college, a diabolical twist of fate: He experienced a major epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest in his sleep. Ryan Perry was 22, and although he survived the heart attack, his family made the decision to take him off life support on April 25, 2019.
Monday marks the three-year anniversary of his death, but Ryan’s memory lives on through the Ryan Perry Foundation, created by Robert Perry, his father, Allison Spitz, his mother, and Susan Kirshenbaum, who is Mr. Perry’s second wife (or “bonus mom,” as listed on the foundation’s website), along with Ryan’s brother and a couple of friends. Mr. Perry and Ms. Kirshenbaum are Amagansett residents.
There will always be different responses when one takes a bullet to the soul.
“You can kind of stay under the covers or try and do something to make sense of what happened because you can’t make sense of it. Neither is right or wrong,” said Ms. Kirshenbaum, a co-owner of a creative talent placement firm who has been working from her Amagansett home since Covid, as has her husband, an attorney in New York City.
“I wanted to try to turn this obvious tragedy into something positive,” said Mr. Perry. “And, also, to do something to honor Ryan’s memory.”
The foundation began, he said, virtually on the day of Ryan’s funeral, with a GoFundMe campaign that raised around $50,000. In the three years since, the effort has grown exponentially, financially, and in scope. Its goal is, quite simply, to help young adults who share Ryan’s struggles but who do not have Ryan’s affluent parents. Beneficiaries receive financial assistance toward the costs for programs or interventions that can help them move forward successfully, such as inpatient or outpatient treatments and residential or wilderness experiences, which are often beyond an average family’s means. To date, the foundation has helped about eight young people.
“Our philosophy is that we go deep, not wide,” said Mr. Perry. “We’re not a foundation that’s going to affect a broad number of people. So, we really focus on the individuals who come to us and try and meet their needs.” Their last beneficiary, for example, was able to stay in a mental health facility for a 30-day psychiatric evaluation, something that would not have been possible without the foundation’s help.
A key person on the board of the Ryan Perry Foundation is Sarah McGuiness, Ryan’s therapeutic consultant based in the Denver area, who provides crisis intervention for families. Over a phone call, she described how she and Ryan “clicked” almost immediately. “There’s a handful of kids who I’ve really connected with during my work and stayed in touch with long after the treatment is over,” she said. “Ryan was one of those kids.”
Mr. Perry and Ms. Kirshenbaum acknowledged the invaluable guidance they received from her on navigating life with a child struggling with substance abuse.
In her role at the foundation, Ms. McGuiness helps identify potential beneficiaries. Some are her clients, others come to her through recommendations. They are vetted thoroughly, she said, and the overarching criterion is that they must be pro bono clients and display a level of commitment — both the student and the parents. “But there really has to be a financial need, which can look different for a lot of families. It could even be a family that at one point was very financially capable of paying for treatment but they’ve done it six times and now they have nothing left. The donations we make are small but super impactful for a family that has nothing,” she said.
The torment of struggles in young adults today is not unique to Ryan. Nor is it incidental. Ms. McGuiness said she treats a variety of kids, from those who have fallen between the cracks because of issues such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other learning disorders to valedictorians suffering from crippling social anxiety.
“What they don’t understand is that there is a sea of kids around them who also don’t feel like they fit in,” she said, the frustration in her voice palpable. “And, I know this is cliché, but they’re going on Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook and seeing images of people living their best life without recognizing, or having the emotional capacity, to understand what’s underneath all of that and that it’s not perfect for anybody.”
To underscore this damning reality of modern society, East Hampton High School will host a community forum titled “Protecting Our Children From Screen Addiction and Substance Abuse” on Tuesday at 6 p.m. As reported in The Star last week, the school’s principal, Sara Smith, acknowledged that she and her colleagues had witnessed changes in students’ behavior around issues of screen addiction and substance abuse.
Frank Bruni, a New York Times opinion writer, author, and now journalism professor at Duke University, has written copiously about the various turbulences of young adulthood. In one of his columns, he referred to something he called “the sandwich board theory of life.” The basis of his theory is the opposite of social media — that is, to disclose all the ugly truths about ourselves and walk around with sandwich boards listing our demons or failings, our physical or emotional ailments, or whatever one might be enduring. Only then, he posited, will our capacity for empathy grow stronger and our understanding for one another reach a heightened awareness.
The Ryan Perry Foundation is, in a way, Ryan’s sandwich board. There it is, the whole truth about him, unfiltered so that others can see themselves in him and know that they aren’t alone: the bright, buoyant personality, a social magnet with a love for ice hockey and fashion — “He had great style,” said his father, pointing to a photograph of a handsome young man in a suit, with a headful of curls. And, also, the teen who almost made it after years of struggling mightily at school, with A.D.H.D., a tumultuous home life, and who found his panacea in drugs.
