[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10998″ img_size=”1000×500″ alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]By now most people have heard that Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of Spongebob Squarepants passed away on Monday, losing his battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Hillenburg was just 57 years old. The animator and former Marine Biology Instructor created a group of characters that have been seen and loved the world over.
His passing was announced by his long time creative partners at Nickelodeon with this statement:
We are incredibly saddened by the news that Steve Hillenburg has passed away following a battle with ALS. He was a beloved friend and long-time creative partner to everyone at Nickelodeon, and our hearts go out to his entire family. Steve imbued SpongeBob SquarePants with a unique sense of humor and innocence that has brought joy to generations of kids and families everywhere. His utterly original characters and the world of Bikini Bottom will long stand as a reminder of the value of optimism, friendship and the limitless power of imagination.
You might wonder, why would a 55 year old man care about the passing of the man who created a cartoon? The answer is two fold. First off, I am the proud parent of a child with severe autism. He is highly intelligent but non-conversational. He does like to repeat things and has done so from an early age. One of the first cartoons that inspired him to repeat some of the dialog he heard was Spongebob Squarepants. It became a common thing to see him run around the house saying “I’m ready! I’m ready! I’m ready! over and over again. While this might have been somewhat annoying after awhile, what wasn’t annoying was hearing our son speak and using words we recognized. It wasn’t conversational, but it was a start.
Eventually, the more he watched, the more dialogue he picked up. He didn’t just use the words however, he would say them like the characters did. From Spongebob’s machine gun laugh to Squidwards nasal laments. “Welcome to the home of unrecognized talent.” From Patrick’s greeting to the Krusty Krab to the voice of Plankton, he would mimic them all. Sometimes you might not recognize the words, but you would recognize the vocal intonations of who was saying them. For us, it was great progress being made. Naturally, with his interest in Spongebob, we started buying him the seasons on DVD, little by little until he had most of them. He never watched them all, he would just pick out his favorite parts and as I watched them with him, I became a fan as well. My favorite was Patrick who made Sponebob look like a Rhodes Scholar but he was loyal to a fault. I also was a big fan of Plankton, who envisioned himself like Lex Luthor as an evil genius even though he was the size of a jelly bean. My son would watch this show and repeat what he heard and eventually, his vocabulary grew.
He is now 16 years old and still struggles with conversational speech but he does speak and we are still working with him. Every once in a while he’ll still quote Spongebob and I’ll still smile at it. So the passing of Stephen Hillenburg is more than the passing of a creative man, it is the passing of a man whose creation helped give my son a voice. For that, he’ll always have my gratitude. The greatest of condolences to his family and his millions of fans worldwide.
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Senior Writer at GeekVibesNation – I am a 50 something child of the 70’s who admits to being a Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book junkie who once dove head first over a cliff (Ok, it was a small hill) to try to rescue his Fantastic Four comic from a watery grave. I am married to a lovely woman who is as crazy as I am and the proud parent of a 18 year old boy with autism. My wife and son are my real heroes.
