ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER PHOTO

GIFTED: Williams Syndrome patient Mary Hendryx, 15, plays her own composition for Howard Lenhoff, whose daughter Gloria has the same condition.

"Mentally retarded," the parents heard.

So imagine Kristine Hendryx's surprise when baby Mary's gift surfaced while she was still in the crib.

"I would sing a few notes to her and she would sing them right back, and she always had perfect pitch," Hendryx says. "Then I would make up phrases - random notes,   nothing familiar.  But instead of singing them back, she would finish them."                                                       

"She was 3. It was surprising enough that she could sing back on pitch, but when she decided to finish my tunes for me . . . well, that's when I knew something was really going on."

It's eerie, how many parents of Williams kids tell similar stories. When Meghan Finn was 2, she began plunking out harmonies on the piano. When Gloria Lenhoff was a toddler, she toddled in time to the music.  "Gloria had a short attention span for everything except music," says her father Howard Lenhoff.  "She could listen to music for hours."

The mysterious musicality of these individuals - and thousands like them - is forcing science to rethink its definition of intelligence.

Williams people have an average IQ of 60, classifying them as mildly to moderately retarded. They can't make change for a dollar, or add 5 and 3 correctly, or read music.   Many can't tie their own shoelaces, handle a knife at the dinner table or tell left from right. They have extreme difficulties with spatial relationships, logical reasoning and abstract ideas.


So explain how soprano Gloria Lenhoff, 43, can sing Schubert pieces 12 minutes long, in German, entirely from memory. Or how Mary Hendryx, 15, can compose original ballads, with rhyming lyrics, on the piano. Or how Meghan Finn, 21, can bring the audience to its feet, cheering, with her pop diva voice.

"Our whole definition of intelligence is screwed up," says Lenhoff, a research professor emeritus in the department of developmental and cell biology at the University of California.  He is completing a study of Williams people.

"They're not musical savants the way some autistic people are. They have to practise. But they have a real musical intelligence - often surpassing that of normal individuals. I don't call them retarded. I call them mentally asymmetric."

The haunting conclusion scientists are reaching from their study of Williams people is that things as complex as personality, behaviour and thought processes may be deeply rooted in genetics.  Not just for Williams people. But for all of us.

Williams people share an uncanny number of characteristics, in addition to their intense love of music. They look like the pixies you see in children's storybooks. They have acutely sensitive hearing. They often have heart problems. They speak with strikingly rich vocabularies. They're so universally warm, compassionate and outgoing that they're said to possess "cocktail-party" personalities.

But can personality and behaviour be a function of chemistry?

In 1993, researchers learned that Williams is caused the by the loss of a tiny piece of genetic material from chromosome 7. The deleted piece contains 15 or more genes (including the gene for elastin, which allows tissue to expand and contract again - accounting for their heart problems).

Scientists also believe that, through Williams studies, they've isolated the gene that helps us concentrate.  And the gene that controls visual and spatial skills.    

And somehow, these parents believe, Williams people can also help us understand one of life's great mysteries: how the brain processes musical information. 

"It's like music is their gauge - the sound of music is their way of thinking and feeling," says Meghan's dad Kevin Finn.  "There's no question that we, as parents, have influence on our children.  But there's an awful lot of that raw material - I don't want to say 'programmed' - but established at birth."

"What I see in Meghan," Finn says, "what strikes me, is how much we don't understand."

Meghan is a regular chatterbox, entertaining everyone at Lenhoff's specially arranged Williams luncheon with tales of her recent trip to Ireland. She goes on and on about the castles, the friendly folks, the vibrant green of the countryside - and the music - with the ardour of a pirate who has unearthed buried treasure.

"Amazing!" Meghan says, slapping her hand to her chest with dramatic flourish.   "Just amazing.  I love Ireland.  I really want to go back."

If you didn't know, you might not suspect anything was really different about Meghan.

Williams' mark is more obvious on Gloria and Mary. They listen to Meghan's tales intently, then eat quietly as their parents make confessions about the syndrome that has left such a mark on all their lives.

"When Meghan was born, I went through a very difficult period, "Finn says between bites of a sandwich.

"I felt I had been cheated." Meghan nods sympathetically, but says nothing.

Lenhoff takes a sip of water.  "We all thought we did something wrong," he says.  "Was Gloria born like this because of that trip to the dentist when her mother was pregnant?  Was it because of a cocktail, or smoking?"

Gloria's eyes are fixed on her plate.  Her mother Sylvia says nothing.

"This was the guilt we had.  And because of this guilt, I taught a class called From Conception To Birth.  To try to educate my students about how to avoid birth defects in their own children."

Mary's mother, Kristine Hendryx is a devout Mormon who believes in God's will.   "I knew I hadn't done anything," she says. "But I worried that she wouldn't be happy."  Mary smiles one of those famous melt-'em-in-their-shoes smiles and her mother smiles back.

"When Mary was, maybe, about a year old, I realized she was happy. This was a very content person."

Lenhoff would allow himself no such comfort.  "It wasn't until they realized that there was a piece of the chromosome missing that the guilt started to go away," he says, explaining that the condition seems to arise from a spontaneous mutation in an individual sperm or egg.

Most of the time, the girls assure their parents, they are happy. But the world outside can be cruel. They're often teased, called "retards", underestimated.

"Sometimes it's hard for me to handle people when they tease me in a mean way," Gloria says.  "I say in a nice way, 'Please.  It hurts my feelings when you tease me.  I don't like it and I wish you wouldn't do it.  Because people who have Williams Syndrome are special people'."

Vigorous nods. "One of my favourite sayings is, 'Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can shatter the heart'," Meghan says.  "They can shatter the heart."

"Right on," Gloria says.  "Right on."

When the ladies finish their salads, it's time for an unscientific experiment. "C'mon, girls!" Lenhoff says.  "You want to play some music?"

"Yeah!" they squeal like teens in a Gidget movie.  They have never done this together before, but they slip their arms around each other and enter the living room as a unit.  "It's a fun day, isn't it?" Gloria asks softly.

Mary goes first, taking her place at the piano.  She's a bit hunched over the keyboard, her hands are a bit gnarled.  But all handicaps seem to disappear as she brushes the keys softly, tenderly, and sings her ballad in a clear voice:

"When you're feeling sad, you can't go on, I will be right there to give you the strength to carry on.  No matter how far away you are, you are always in my heart."

Gloria and Meghan are sucked into the music instantly, swaying to the beat, and wild applause erupts as the last notes fade away.  Mary's smile could light a small city.

"You're going to be a rock star, Mary?" Finn asks.

"No, not rock," Mary corrects him.  "Pop. That will be the title of my CD.", says Mary.  Meghan goes next, singing the Titanic theme song, "My Heart Will Go On."  She wields the microphone like a veteran lounge singer, swaying in time, vibrato pulsing as she strains for the high notes.

"That's a hard one to sing, but that's a good one!" she exclaims when it's over.   As an encore, she plays John Lennon's "Imagine" on the piano.

But "The Voice" belongs to Gloria.  Classically trained and strong as a locomotive, she has sung all over the world.  Her reserve falls away as she wraps her arms around the big body of her accordion and belts out, "All I Have to Do is Dream" in a soprano so powerful it nearly blows everyone out of the room.

"Glass may break!" Mary exclaims.  Addition and subtraction might not be Gloria's forte, but she plays her instrument perfectly, one hand pushing buttons and pumping bellows, the other snaking up and down the keyboard despite the imperfect angle of her hand.

"Bravo, Gloria!" Lenhoff says, beaming, echoing the title of a documentary Arlene Alda did on Gloria a decade ago.

Stage fright is a foreign concept to the girls, who are eager now to sing together.

"Let's get ready girls, here we go!" Gloria exclaims as she plays accordion on "When the Saints Go Marching In," "Edelweiss" and "Kumbaya". They fall naturally into harmonies and counterpoint, hamming it up, swaying and giggling, singing as if their souls would split.

"That," Meghan says when it's over, "was awesome."

Mary wrote her ballad "You're Always in My Heart" in 10 minutes. "When I play music, I feel love," she says.  "I feel warm.  I don't feel scared at all. When I don't play music, I feel bored.  I feel dead."

How to explain the phenomenon that is Gloria?

"Surely, she must have lived in another life and had knowledge of music," offers Barbara Hasty, Gloria's longtime voice teacher.  Nearly a decade had passed between the time Gloria first learned Strauss' "Morgen" and the day Hasty pulled it out again and asked her to sing it.  Gloria had instant recall. "It really is astounding," Hasty says.

Ursula Bellugi of the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla is studying the cognition link in Williams people. "It's one of the most interesting things I have ever come across," she says.

Lenhoff is completing a systematic study of musical ability in Williams children. The results: Williams people show significantly more interest in, and emotional responsiveness to, music than does the general population.

The question remains, why? 

Someday, science may be able to answer that question. But in the meantime, Lenhoff wastes no time.

Seized by the conviction that more needs to be done to help Williams people reach their potential, Lenhoff helped found a music camp especially for them.  It is led by masters who don't mind tossing away the score, teaching by ear and delighting in the less-than-technically spectacular sounds that often arise.

The camp is in its fifth year, and is held at Belvoir Terrace, a fine arts summer camp in Lenox, Mass. The annual pilgrimage - which will be attended by more than 50 Williams people this year, including Gloria, Meghan and Mary - is taking on the patina of Christmas.

It's the only time Williams folk are in a big group with others like themselves. And for many, it's the only time they really feel as if they belong.

Researchers who study the brain flock to the camp as well.