By Angelina Gamba
Jody Nolan’s father first began showing small signs of Alzheimer’s back in 2012, like forgetting to turn off the hose in the backyard or taking the wrong exit. At that point, he volunteered to give up driving.
“I know for a lot of people, it’s really difficult for them to give up their independence,” Nolan said. “He was a very gentle, easy going guy, and he didn’t want to be a burden on anybody. So it was easy for him to give it up.”
In 2014, he was officially diagnosed. He attended an outpatient memory care facility to get exercise and social activity during the day for 18 months, but eventually his symptoms got worse, which made it difficult for him to stay at home. Nolan’s family then found a nursing care facility with a dementia care unit, and he moved there in 2016.
“It was just five minutes away from my mother’s house, so she was just there everyday from nine to bedtime,” Nolan said. “She was just that dedicated to my father.”
Nolan added that others in her family have been affected by Alzheimer’s or dementia, including her paternal grandmother and some of her father’s sisters.
“It’s very strong in the family. I’ve got five brothers and sisters, so the odds that one or many of us are going to have it is very high,” Nolan said.
She first attended Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Rhode Island, where she and her family are originally from, shortly after her father was diagnosed.
”My older sister and I did a walk there just participating, not having our own team. I think that’s how we started out,” Nolan said.
She also volunteered for a different cause through a connection with a friend and realized that she enjoyed volunteering.
“It was really Alzheimer’s that I wanted to work on because of the personal connection that I had with it,” she said.
Nolan saw Alzheimer’s Association Senior Development Director Andrea Helm at a Walk to End Alzheimer’s Sarasota event and learned that she was the liaison for the committee, which immediately inspired her to get more involved.
“I said, ‘Ok, well I know her, so I’m gonna see what I can do to help.”
Nolan has had her walk team, Team Toomey, since 2016. It’s a small team that consists of about six people including herself, her husband and her daughter. The team is named after her father, who passed away from Alzheimer’s in October of 2017.
“The bulk of our contribution comes from just reaching out to family members and friends,” Nolan said. “I’ve been able to get about $12,000 worth in donations since I started. Each year we try to get a little bit higher, reach more people and see what we can do because we need this research, and we need a cure.”
Nolan’s favorite part about volunteering is accomplishing new goals.
“The walk had a record amount of donations collected last year, and I know that the Alzheimer’s Association as a whole had a record year last year,” Nolan said.” It’s great to see people participating and donating to this really meaningful cause.”
Overall, she encourages new volunteers to get involved.
“Walk to End Alzheimer’s itself is fun, and there are a lot of activities that we had there last year. Also, you get to see and bond with people that have been touched by this disease in some way. We have a great group of volunteers down in Sarasota, and we’re trying to increase our committee reach and get more people volunteering. The more volunteers we have, the better chances we have of raising more funds.”
To learn more about becoming a volunteer, attend an information session held on the first Thursday of each month. Register at AlzFla.org/VolunteerWebinar.
For more guidance and resources, call the Alzheimer’s Association 24/7 Helpline at 800.272.3900 or go to alz.org.
