"Every son holds the future for his father.”                    
-Road to Perdition, 2002

It seems like something ripped right from the 2002 Movie Road to Perdition,
witnessing my father’s decline from early-onset dementia. One scene from the movie
in particular always comes to mind. A group of mobsters are considering their options
for knocking off the lead character, who is taking his son to live with a relative in
the safe town of Perdition. The mob boss had very close ties to the lead character’s family,
and wants no harm to come to the son as the father is made to “disappear.” Another mobster
wants to kill both father and son, asking the question “Do you think that boy’s just going
to forget what we’ve done? You don’t think he’ll grow into a man and learn how to use a gun?”
The question as it applies to my own life is, “You don’t think he’ll grow into a man and
learn how to use his voice”?

When my father, Gerard Adams, died in his late fifties after a rapid three year decline,
I was only fifteen years old.
While I had other father figures in my life, it would have been nice to be able to talk to
him about girls and his experiences in college. Yes, the teenage years were a very
inopportune time for him to leave us.
With each year, in fact, I still find new things I could have related to him about.
Though I was only in my sophomore year of high school and not in the best position to become
an advocate, I held on to the frustration I felt towards this thing, this disease that killed
my father.

My stepmother, Jane Adams, felt a similar frustration. I can only imagine the rage
I would feel having only gotten one year of marriage to my spouse before a decline into
disease. It was through the Alzheimer’s Association that she found support as a caregiver
and a mourning wife. One year, she invited me to join her team for the Association’s Annual
Memory Walk. While I came for the scenic walk on a beautiful day, I left with a tool for the
outlet of my own frustration. I became very attracted to the idea of fundraising for
research that might kill the thing that killed my dad.
 
By this time, I had finished High School and started college at RIT.
Not only was I actively involved in the college’s community service group,
I became its Vice President of Community Service. This achieved, I set up my own Memory Walk
team and rallied others to join me in fundraising efforts. Within a few years of participating,
we were consistently among the highest fundraising teams. I approached everyone I knew
from classmates in high school I hadn’t spoken to in years to former co-workers to professors
to family to strangers I met while walking the dog, and rather enjoyed putting some of
my marketing lessons to work.

Within the last year, I’ve come to know most of the friendly people working at our Rochester
chapter on a first name basis, and have even been invited to share my ideas for advancing
our collective cause amongst a new generation of those desiring a cure.
Without the Association, I wouldn’t have known where to begin. As for Alzheimer’s,
I’m putting it on notice… this son hasn’t forgotten what it did to his Father when he was
just a boy. Now, as a man, he will work tirelessly to bring an end to this barbaric
disease if it takes a lifetime.

-Christopher Adams