Kalispell Alzheimer's walk set for this weekend

Deanna McElwee knew something was wrong.

She was helping her father, Gene Boyle, a long-time educator and athletic director, set up for a track meet at Flathead High School. As he pulled a tape measurer across the discus station, he turned to her and said, “I think they’ve changed the tape measure since the last time I used it.”

The truth was, he couldn’t read it.

As if to confirm her suspicions, on the way home Boyle ran two stop signs.

The culprit behind her father’s irregular behavior was Alzheimer’s, a progressive disease that impairs memory function and affects 5.5 million Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. By 2050, that number could rise as high as 16 million. The disease affects one in 10 people over age 65 and is the sixth-leading cause of death in the U.S.

Alzheimer’s took Boyle’s life on May 16, 2016, when he was 73 years old, just a year after his retirement from St. Matthew’s School.

To honor his memory and help raise awareness about the disease, McElwee will be one of many participating in this weekend’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s at Woodland Park in Kalispell. Registration for the event begins at 9 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 23, followed by a ceremony at 10:30 a.m. and the walk at 11 a.m.

“For me, it’s important to attend because the Alzheimer’s Association is working hard to fundraise money in order to find a cure,” McElwee said. “More and more families are going to be affected — the more that we can be aware on how to support each other is vital.”

McElwee speaks from first-hand experience.

She watched the brutal progression of the disease, as it slowly ate away her father’s memory, until he was a shell of his former self.

She remembers when the family had to take his keys away and sell his pickup because he was no longer safe to drive. She remembers when he got lost walking the dog and how her mother cared for him until his needs eclipsed her ability to help him.

Boyle lived with Alzheimer’s for six years, and spent the last nine months of his life in three different memory-care facilities. Every weekend, Boyle visited her father, and continued to do so even when he’d forgotten who she was.

“To watch him go through those changes was very difficult and sad,” she said. “He stopped remembering me for about the last year of life and honestly the first time he didn’t know who I was, it didn’t bother me like I thought it would because he had not been my dad for a few years. I still loved him but he wasn’t my dad anymore.”

Boyle’s wife, Barb, served as his primary caregiver, but she also had help from his “golf angels” — a group of five retired teachers who took Gene golfing every week, providing Barb four hours of much-needed respite.

“These five guys would take my dad golfing twice a week. They would put the ball on the tee, they would line him up and they would say, ‘Swing away, Gene,’” McElwee said. “I can’t even give them enough credit. … I don’t know what she would have done without them.”

Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s takes a lot of patience, she said.

“If you tell a toddler something — ‘no’ or ‘this is how to do it,’ they learn, but someone with Alzheimer’s, you can say it 1,000 times and it’s just pointless because they can’t remember,” she said.

For McElwee, the grieving process began long before her father’s death, and when he eventually did pass, she felt relief.

“So much of Alzheimer’s people don’t see. They don’t see when they forget how to eat and forget how to swallow. When my dad passed away he weighed under 100 pounds,” she said. “We knew he was going to a better place and we know that we’ll see him again and he can watch over us and take care of us.”

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss may be reached at 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.