http://www.alzheimers-illinois.org/enewsletter/september2013/walk.asp
Four people share the reasons they Walk to End Alzheimer’s
As Lana Bender talked about her husband —his deteriorating mind, his inability to be left alone and the increasing difficulty of balancing her caregiver duties with running her own bakery — she was also weighing her options. Does she move her husband of 46 years into a nursing home or does she continue what she’s doing, caring for him at home and bringing in someone during the day while she works? What happens when, perhaps even sooner than she anticipates, her husband needs more care than she can provide at home?
But then Bender stopped. And the next words she uttered were so simple and true, it was heartbreaking.
“I’m not ready to give Bob up yet.”
Bob Bender is Lana’s high school sweetheart; he is the father to her three children and grandfather to her four grandchildren.
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Four people share the reasons they Walk to End Alzheimer’s
As Lana Bender talked about her husband —his deteriorating mind, his inability to be left alone and the increasing difficulty of balancing her caregiver duties with running her own bakery — she was also weighing her options. Does she move her husband of 46 years into a nursing home or does she continue what she’s doing, caring for him at home and bringing in someone during the day while she works? What happens when, perhaps even sooner than she anticipates, her husband needs more care than she can provide at home?
But then Bender stopped. And the next words she uttered were so simple and true, it was heartbreaking.
“I’m not ready to give Bob up yet.”
Bob Bender is Lana’s high school sweetheart; he is the father to her three children and grandfather to her four grandchildren.
“It’s one of the hardest and saddest things to lose your best friend, the person you love and married and started a family with,” she said. “This journey is the hardest emotional journey ever. Ever.”
It was the year 2000 when a 53-year-old Bob Bender started exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Head of his family’s grain equipment business, Bob was a wizard at free handing drawings of complicated machinery and building the parts. But then unusual things started happening.
“He would get off the phone with a client and wouldn’t remember who he’d talk to or he would take four days to do a drawing that would have normally taken him one day,” Lana Bender said.
Her husband’s decline from young-onset Alzheimer’s has been gradual, but it has touched every facet of Bender’s life. This fall, she will act as the Honorary Chair for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Decatur, speaking about her experiences and connecting with others who have been impacted by the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S.
She’s also called Bob’s old high school football teammates — the team was the first to bring an undefeated season to Decatur — so that they might participate in the walk, which will take place Saturday, October 12 at Forsyth Village Park.
“Bob’s old teammates will wear kelly green and white, the school’s colors, with their number on the back and Bob’s number on the front,” Bender said.
A quintessential optimist
“One of the greatest guys you’ll ever meet.”
That was how Reagan Hogerty described his 68-year-old father, Dennis Hogerty.
“My dad was the best man at my wedding,” said Hogerty of La Grange. “He always says he’s the luckiest man in the world and that everything is just idyllic. Idyllic — that’s the word he always uses.”
Hogerty has clearly inherited that trademark optimism. The transplant from Fort Collins, Colo., where his parents still reside, said he has every intention of maximizing the time he gets to spend with father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease about a year and a half ago.
“We take a trip every quarter,” said Hogerty, who detailed father-son excursions to the National Championship football game in Miami and the Final Four. “We’re going to plan a golf outing next.”
Hogerty currently sits on the 2013 Chicago Walk to End Alzheimer’s committee, a volunteer-driven group that generates awareness and outlines fundraising goals for the signature event of the Alzheimer’s Association within individual communities. His discovery of last year’s Chicago walk was nothing if not serendipitous.
“It was a Sunday morning and we had nothing going on. I sit down, flip on the TV to (event emcee) Alan Krashesky and hear him say ‘There’s still time to get down here for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s.’ I call to my wife, ‘get the shoes on the boys’ and we head down there,” Hogerty recalled. “Once you’re there, you see all these pinwheel flowers spinning in the wind and it was honestly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”
When Hogerty received a follow-up email asking if he’d like to get involved in future events, he didn’t hesitate.
“(My involvement) is honoring my dad,” said Hogerty, whose siblings and parents will join him at the Sunday, September 29 event at Montrose Harbor. “I don’t want anyone else to go through this. I know there will be a cure one day.”
‘This is not a scarlet letter’
After 12 years of knowing each other and dating long distance, Cheryl Levin-Folio and Michael Folio made it official in September of 2012. The two had a picture-perfect wedding; photos show them walking hand in hand along the beach in Florida.
But it was only a few months later the couple faced major hardship when Folio, 56, began demonstrating uncharacteristic behavior.
“He would look confused to me, confused about what direction he was going in,” said Levin-Folio of her husband, a man who’d previously worked as Senior Vice President of Real Estate for Home Depot.
Folio underwent several tests and scans, leading to a diagnosis of young-onset Alzheimer’s.
“He said he wished he had a brain tumor or cancer, something that might be able to be fixed,” Levin-Folio said. “I said this is not a scarlet letter.
“My personality is to look at the glass overflowing,” she continued. “I say to him, ‘We’re together, and we’re fighting this together.’”
Levin-Folio has since joined the 2013 North Shore Walk to End Alzheimer’s committee. The walk will take place Saturday, September 21 at Gallery Park in Glenview, and Levin-Folio is already off to an impressive start, raising thousands of dollars.
“Everyone we know has responded,” said Levin-Folio about an email she sent regarding her team’s participation in the event. “I was touched by so many people who said they were also affected by this disease.”
‘Getting stronger every year’
To Alex Koch, it is of utmost importance for companies to back their workers and recognize those responsibilities that lie beyond the office. It was with that in mind that Koch helped form Team TJX, which participated in its first McHenry County Walk to End Alzheimer’s in 2011.
The team, which represents the parent company of TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, Marshalls and other retailers, took part in 2012 and will be present for this year’s walk on Sunday, September 15 at Sunset Park in Lake in the Hills. The company is also a sponsor of the fundraising event.
“Many of our associates have become caregivers,” said Koch, an employee relations manager with the company and a current McHenry County Walk to End Alzheimer’s committee member. “We, at TJX, very consciously try to get to know someone outside of the workplace.”
Koch knows firsthand the importance of raising awareness and dollars in the critical fight against Alzheimer’s. His own family members — aunts Anna Mae McKee and Pat Miller — both developed Alzheimer’s disease in their 70s and have since passed away.
“The committee talks about how to make the walk better each year. We try to think outside the box on how to get donations,” Koch said. “I think the message of the Walk to End Alzheimer’s is getting stronger every year.”
To learn more about an event in your community, go to alz.org/walk. Please see this magazine’s back cover for a full listing of walks in the Greater Illinois Chapter area.
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