~~~SITE UNDER RENOVATION~~~
Welcome!!!
this site has been created to increase awareness, encourage advocacy, and to raise funds for projects that help families that are affected by Alzheimer's and other dementias.
This site is inspired by our family's beloved matriarch: A wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, Friend; who while fighting alzheimer's continually Reminded us to:
“PUT A SMILE ON YOUR FACE, AND A SONG IN YOUR HEART”
Letter to Gram - “Celebrating 10 years of Advocacy
Dear Grams,
10 years ago… You had just been diagnosed with Lewy-Body dementia with Alzheimer’s. Yet, we realized after becoming informed of the disease that you had been living with the issues of the disease since probably 2003.
We’ve come a long way since we started this journey in 2013.
Here we are…
1- Day long, Longest Day Cooking Class
1- Wapakoneta “Put a smile on your face and a song in your heart” Day Proclamation
1-COVID virtual Longest Day prayer service and music concert
1- The Acres Alzheimer’s awareness day festival
1- Website created
1-Longest Table Dinner
2- Luminary “Longest Night” Fundraisers
2- commissioned songs, lyrics to honor both family mottos.
3-National Alzheimer’s Impact Movement forums
3- Walk’s to End Alzheimer’s
3- Wapakoneta’s Longest Day Festival
3-Parade floats
3- Viewings of “Alive Inside”
3- years on the regional Longest Day Committee
7-biannual Longest Day/Longest Night Cookie Drives
7- other relatives diagnosed with a form of dementia.
9-Ohio Advocacy Days (“Memory Day”)
10+ Television interviews
20+ newspaper articles
30+ Speaking engagements
150- Alzheimer’s awareness painted rocks in circulation
100+ iPods collected and distributed for Music and Memory
100- Golden V pins distributed
200+ handshakes with elected officials & celebrities
1,000- “Got Your V’s” cards distributed
5,000- “Put A Smile On Your Face And A Song In Your Heart” bracelets distributed
Approx: over $30k raised for advocacy, research, and resources.
7 years of you restfully waiting for Christ’s return
And TWO ANGELIC VISITS Later…..
And we, just in the last two years, have stepped into a season of treatment. It’s not the best. It doesn’t help most. But it’s a start. And it does help some people.
To honor you, and gramps who was a champion of a caregiver to you, I will continue this work for the rest of my life. So that maybe we can get closer and closer to where less and less families have to go through the heartache we did as you slipped deeper and deeper into the fog of Alzheimer’s.
I love you grams…
Love,
Your Tony