Dear Hayley,

Yesterday morning, I awoke to this email:

I recently read your article in the NY Times about your father and I have been to the website you and Hayley set up to honor the relationship you both have with your fathers. After being a caregiver for an AD parent, I embarked on a career as a fundraiser for the brain institute at the University of Florida. It’s my way of fighting back and healing, and we are always looking for partners.

I travel throughout the state visiting with grateful patients and alumni who support our research, treatment, and education mission. Your dad is a former donor to our department of Neurology so we have an address for him in Naples. If you are down there in the near future, I would be happy to stop by and introduce myself to you and maybe we can find some people together who would be interested in setting up a research fund in honor of your father and grandfather. It would be a way to create a legacy for him in Florida within the field of Neurology, and it could benefit research into AD. I’ve worked with families before on similar vehicles to honor family through an annual lecture series named after a family member or naming a room or research lab. The important thing would be to find something that would be meaningful to your family, and I’m confident we could do that together.

Stephen Figueroa, Director of Development, UF College of Medicine

Of course I wrote him back and am excited to get to work on this project. I’m hoping our readers can put on their collective thinking caps and help come up with a creative way to get the brain rolling.

Love,

Nancy