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IN YOUR PRIME
Valentine
If you insist February 14 is just another children’s day, to be celebrated with chocolate hearts and puffy Valentine cards, you need to listen to Bill Fay, caregiver extraordinaire:
“Each lady will be given a wrist-corsage for Valentine’s Day, along with a card,” begins Fay. “These nursing home residents seldom get mail, so a card with their name on it is a big thing. Their reactions are unbelievable.”
Since Bill Fay may not be a familiar name in your community, here’s a quick background report: a retired salesman for Kodak, in Rochester, NY, Bill and wife Katherine had moved to central Florida to build a new life in leisure. Four adult sons were doing nicely, thank you. Worries then were strangers inside the Fay household. However, that’s when the heartache came stalking.
“Katherine’s primary care doctor told her she did (ital.) not (end ital.) have Alzheimer’s,” the widower remembers. The physician was wrong, mistaken. This dark and foul day began what Bill Fay today calls: “A long, 10-year cycle” ending, inevitably, with the wife’s death.
“Katherine pretty much fought the battle alone,” he adds, “because the medical community had no answers…” From this wrenching experience, a trauma of unspeakable breadth, emerged an activist caregiver: founder six years ago of Alzheimer’s Helpers, Inc. (AHI), of Tavares, FL.
With caring as their lone product, this non-profit band of volunteers (Fay refers to “my Mom & Pop operation”) bounces around central Florida, giving local nursing homes infusions of joy because, in the words of the founder: “Our institutions should be places people go to comfortably live—not places to go and die unhappily.”
“We caregivers hold a powerful tool,” Fay is fond of saying. “We’re able to show the Alzheimer’s person love. Yes, Alzheimer’s people recognize love.”
It is poetic, and life-affirming, that on the day many Americans, of all ages, pause to think of romantic love and hearts, Bill Fay with partner Anna Marie Fay will be handing out flowers and cards, building jumbo ice cream sundaes, and looking after several dozen women and men whom advocate Fay knows as “our out-of-sight elders.”
Moreover, our narrative is graced by the fact that on February 10, 2001, Anna Marie Pavlik became the new Mrs. Bill Fay and, coincidentally, official treasurer and second-in-command at Alzheimer’s Helpers, Incorporated.
Asked to recall how this union began, Anna Marie describes a time when she met Bill through another volunteer group. Thereafter, “our friendship blossomed into love. Bill is the sweetest, kindest, most unselfish and smartest person I have ever known.”
Husband Bill protests: “I’m not that sterling.” He says quickly: “We worked together three years. You get to know a person that way…(and) Anna has a warm personality.”
Plainly, Bill Fay, 77, onetime sales executive, is decidedly more comfortable discussing the extravagant ice cream treats his volunteers will serve on Valentine’s day. Additionally, he needed to rhapsodize over the cards his group would deliver, in person.
“Remember, these residents get next to no mail,” he repeated. “So, the card is a big hit. We pay 25 cents for a very pretty, standup card. They love it, and talk about getting a bang for your buck…”
He hit upon an idea then: people could take a stack of inexpensive Valentine’s Day cards to a nearby nursing home. “Put the residents’ first names on the envelopes,” he instructed, “and become a hero for the day!”
(Alternative suggestion: send a stack of cards, or a $10 bill ($20’s welcome, as well) to Alzheimer’s Helpers, 871 Vindale Rd., Tavares, FL 32778. Email:
ahifay@earthlink.net)
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Outrageous Associations
