Walk to End Alzheimer’s returns for 2nd year

A procession of pinwheel flowers brightened the side of the Kenai Spur Highway on Saturday for the Second Annual Kenai Peninsula Walk to End Alzheimer’s.

The annual walk is an awareness event and fundraiser put on by the Alzheimer’s Association. At the Challenger Learning Center of Alaska this weekend, tables were set up to connect people with resources or recruit them for the association’s advocacy work, and dozens milled about carrying flowers from the walk’s “Promise Garden.”

Each color of flower represents the different connections its bearer has to Alzheimer’s disease. Blue is held by people with Alzheimer’s, purple is carried by a person who’s lost someone to Alzheimer’s, yellow is carried by someone who provides care for someone living with Alzheimer’s and orange is carried by someone who broadly supports the association’s stated mission of seeking a world without Alzheimer’s.

Sara Hondel, a board member of the Alzheimer’s Association of Alaska, said that nearly 9,000 people in Alaska live with Alzheimer’s, and that Alaska’s unique population dynamics exacerbate the challenges it can pose. As Alaska’s population ages, the number of potential caregivers declines. The association, she said, works to further research the disease and provide support and resources to the people caring for their loved ones.

Tiffany Vassar, senior program manager of contributions and events for GCI, said she provided care for her grandmother while she dealt with Alzheimer’s. Vassar moved her grandmother to Alaska from Arizona and spent years working part time before returning home to relieve either her grandfather or uncle to provide “everything she needed.”

Though Vassar said that experience was special, it was also challenging to navigate a changed dynamic where she became a caregiver for someone who had formerly been a maternal presence in her life. She said she was excited to support the Alzheimer’s Association both personally and through GCI because of that experience.

“I really cherished those years I got to spend with my grandma,” Vassar said. “It’s really hard to show up and your loved one not know who you are. It’s a different relationship at that point.”

This was the second year of the walk locally on the peninsula, and Hondel said the sophomore outing had drawn a larger crowd.

Moving the event to the Challenger Center, after it debuted locally last year at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex, makes the event better accommodating to people with mobility disabilities, Hondel said. People could be seen in wheelchairs or using walkers completing the route, which followed sidewalks and other paved spaces for the complete duration of the route — either a mile or three.

Before anyone took off walking, Diamond Dance Project brought the energy up with a performance that welcomed in members of the crowd, and then a ceremony was held to recognize the people carrying promise flowers and the reasons why they did. It was a boy from Kenai Middle School, bearing a white flower meant to represent the dream of a person who has survived Alzheimer’s, who led the group off on this year’s walk.

For more information, find “Alzheimer’s Association Alaska” on Facebook.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.