People frequently ask me just what the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s/Dementia are; frankly, in its beginning stages there is no perceptible difference in the individual under siege from this vicious disease. I outlined this in an earlier post where in Stage I of the disease, behavior and memory often show no signs of impairment.
That was the case with my mother who was able to recall, at length, a cherished memory about one of her four siblings who tragically died at a young age. Mary Patricia never forgot the details surrounding her favorite brother, Peter, and his untimely death when she was just 14 years old.
What follows is a story she related to me many years ago and one I now share with you.
Let’s go back to 1933; a good year for people like “Machine Gun” Kelly and Ruby Keeler; gangsters and movie stars managed to thrive, even in those difficult times.
America was in the pit of the Great Depression; the only Senators in Washington who made claim to a pay raise were those who donned knickers and won the American League pennant, a feat never to be repeated. The New York Yankees weren’t in the money; they finished second.
Peter Strollo, who loved the Yankees, turned 13 that year. His admiration was only natural because his father (my grandfather) was the manager of the boatyard at New Rochelle’s Hudson Park at that time. Lou Gehrig, who lived only a few blocks away from the boatyard was an avid fisherman and owned a motorboat named “The Water Wagon”. Peter’s father, who Gehrig called by his first name, Frank, often accompanied the slugger on fishing trips.
This was right up my grandfather’s alley as he took any opportunity to have a good time being the consummate “man about town”.
One excursion had Babe Ruth joining his teammate, and Peter’s father, for an all-day fishing and drinking jaunt out on Long Island Sound. The good times rolled along with all three men falling overboard, fishing gear in hand, laughing like fools; fortunately, no one was hurt.
The New York Yankee’s friendship with Peter’s father landed the young boy his most prized possessions…a bat, baseball and glove given to him personally by Lou Gehrig and which the boy slept with each night.
Then, one day in 1933, Peter fell sick with Strep Throat. (My mother recalled that in those days illnesses like that were more serious and the family doctor just didn’t know how to properly treat the boy). As the family watched helplessly, Peter’s condition worsened almost overnight…. and he died.
Peter’s mother placed his cherished Gehrig gifts in the coffin by her young son’s side. Not so much an act of sentimentality as it was a mother’s instinctive knowledge that, to a boy, heaven as a spiritual concept need not be paved with clouds but simply a well-oiled patch of infield dirt.
Surely comfort could be found in the afterlife with the working tools of a modest man known as “The Iron Horse” who batted cleanup for the Yankees and never called in sick for 13 straight years.
