Alzheimer’s Assn. Contributors Honored

The Alzheimer’s Assn. of Orange County remembered its leading contributors at Tuesday’s Founder’s Club Dinner.

About 100 people attended the dinner at the Center Club in Costa Mesa, including the 56 founders, who were honored for raising $187,000 last year for the local association.

Rosemary for Remembrance

For the first time, a Rosemary for Remembrance award was presented to members “who have been instrumental in the growth of the chapter,” said Kent Barnheiser, executive director of the association. The name of the award was borrowed from a line in “Hamlet”: “Then there’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.”

Barnheiser presented the award to John and Donna Crean, who donated $50,000 to the chapter last year and have served as the Founder’s Club chairs for two years in a row.

“Alzheimer’s is a very crippling disease that affects a lot of people,” Donna Crean said. Her husband noted that the disease, which robs patients of their memories, devastates not just its victims but their families as well.

“It’s tough,” he said. “They’re on duty 24 hours a day” to care for their loved ones.

Forget Them Not

With the founders’ help, the association hopes to keep the plight of Alzheimer’s patients in the public eye.

“We hope to increase the awareness of the association. We have a lot of services that can support victims and their families,” said Richard Hamill, incoming association president, who attended the dinner with his wife, MaryLu.

The association’s services include support groups, a help line, a speakers bureau and referrals for diagnostic services and adult day care.

“Families who don’t know where to turn can find a great deal of help” through the association, Hamill said.

The association also lobbies government officials to provide funds for research of the disease’s cause and cure.

“Our society just doesn’t want to focus on the elderly,” said Barnheiser. People in their 20s have been stricken with Alzheimer’s. The disease is the fourth leading cause of death in adults.

A Night to Remember

Before the awards ceremony, guests mingled at a reception where they could study paintings done by Alzheimer’s patients through the association’s “Memories in the Making--The Patient Speaks Through Art” program.

Selly Jenny, board member and chairman of the art program, told guests that even patients who cannot speak because of the disease often can express themselves through their art. One woman, for instance, painted a scene of a creek over and over, she said. When the work was shown to her husband, he recognized the scene as the site of their honeymoon.

Those honored as founders each gave a minimum of $1,000 to the association last year. The guest list included past association president Mitchell Samuelson, board member Nina Harper and founders Virginia Knott Bender, Thomas Fuentes, Doy and Dee Henley, Max Olsan, Robert and Rita Teller, Angel Varela, Chad McWhinney and Carol and Kent Wilken.