Music Helps to Unlock Cherished Memories

During her years of collecting fancy hats, Vesta Curry never dreamed they’d be used in a musical production number.

But when it came her turn to stage an Easter-themed program for Alzheimer’s patients at the Douglas French Center in Los Alamitos last year, the hats were the perfect prop.

As about 50 patients--many of them in wheelchairs--watched, Curry popped a video of “Easter Parade” into a recreation room VCR.

Suddenly, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland appeared on the giant TV screen, strolling fashionably along Fifth Avenue. And Curry, who lives in Laguna Beach, was moving through the crowd, gently setting “Easter bonnets” atop the heads of female patients. She distributed straw fishing hats to the men.

Also on the bill: favorite songs of spring.

Welcome to Music On the Move, a monthly program founded last year by the Pacific Symphony Orchestra to bring music activities to Alzheimer’s patients.

As MOM’s chairwoman, Curry--along with Sharlene Strawbridge, the orchestra’s assistant director of development--has helped coordinate a dozen programs for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disorder that results in profound memory loss and death.

Through MOM, organized by the Pacific Symphony League, volunteers and members of the orchestra perform for shut-ins who can most benefit from the experience.

According to Mary DiCamillo, a professional music therapist who directs adult day-care activities at the Douglas French Center, music reaches Alzheimer’s patients in a way that nothing else can.

“It is a non-threatening medium that helps them tap into their long-term memory,” DiCamillo, 30, explains. “Many of them can remember songs, sing them even, but may not be able to tell you their name.

“The wonderful power of music is that it brings our emotions and memories to the surface so we can experience them again,” she says.

“Have you ever listened to a song that takes you back, reminds you of all the feelings of a certain time? Music helps Alzheimer’s patients encode information. They are able to tap into it, reminisce.”

Curry has become hooked on the MOM experience. She attends all performances.

“It is so soul-satisfying,” she says. “You really feel you have touched the patients in some way.”

It is difficult, though, to see what the patients have become. “The disease has taken them from being contributors to the world to a seemingly meaningless existence,” Curry says.

“I just want to take them in my arms and say, ‘I love you’ and wish they could really hear it.”

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Just last week, Lynda Gome of Huntington Beach presented a Valentine’s Day program to the patients. “We called it Love Songs,” says Gome, who last year presented a Gershwin program to patients. “We had Tony Bennett singing ‘My Funny Valentine,’ and Mel Torme crooning, ‘The Nearness of You.’ They responded wonderfully.

“Before the program begins, the patients are often nodding off, drifting,” Gome notes. “And when the music starts, their heads pick up and they begin to sing. It is so touching, you have to fight back the tears.”

In order to participate in MOM, volunteers take an orientation course at the Douglas French Center. They tour the facility, which houses patients in all stages of Alzheimer’s, and learn about the disease.

“We were taken to the patients’ rooms, and you saw their biographies on their doors,” Gome says. “These people are educated, brilliant people. They were politicians, teachers, musicians, dentists. It is wonderful to be able to give something back to them.”

MOM is unique in California, and perhaps in the country. When Strawbridge presented the MOM concept to a meeting last summer of the Assn. of California Symphony Orchestras, other orchestra representatives said they had programs for senior citizen facilities.

“But none of them were involved in an Alzheimer’s outreach,” Strawbridge says.

“We hope to be able to develop this program in the county to an extent where we can take it to more patients. We are sure there are other Alzheimer’s facilities that need the program.”

Pat Weiss, a MOM volunteer, is planning a country music program for June. “I want to bring them the songs of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers--you know, all the great cowboys.

“All I had to do was go to the center one time and see how the patients react to the music to know how meaningful the program was,” she says.

The program has brought Weiss a new understanding of the disease.

“For so many years, we used to joke about forgetting things, say things like, ‘Oh! I must have old-timers!’

“No more. After seeing the patients, you can’t make jokes about it. Suddenly you realize there is nothing funny about it. And, it could happen to you.”