Ellie Duley

Ellie Stewart Duley led a remarkably unremarkable life until her time raising her son Jon who was born with autism.

Raised in the suburbs of western Massachusetts, Duley attended the University of Maine only one month after her family moved to Virginia.

After college, Duley married and remained in Maine where she still lives with her 8-year-old Newfoundland. Somewhere along the way Duley received her master’s in school counseling and worked in public schools as a counselor before divorcing in 2017.

This project started as a labor of love, and she received a great deal of support from people who knew her back when the going was tougher. As Jon remains a mystery it seemed that people close to her were eager to see what she knew and how the raising of Jon unfolded. This feeling of owing a lot of gratitude to all these wonderful people kept her going in getting a non-verbal child to a semi-independent adult who live at a group home in a wonderful community in Maine.