ALS sufferers and caregivers have a day in the sun during annual Walk to Defeat ALS
BOYNTON BEACH — "In sickness and in health..."
Tim Hanford knows better than most, better than he'd like, that the vow isn't just a collection of words spoken on a happy day. Ana Casey knows it, too.
Standing among the hundreds who gathered at Centennial Park and Ampitheater in Boynton Beach on Saturday for the ALS Association's annual Walk to Defeat ALS, Hanford, 59, admitted there were times when he wanted to run from those words.
They closed in on him a few years ago as his wife, Andrea Douglas Hanford, struggled to walk steadily, fought to swallow. It was ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable neurological disorder that destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing muscle weakness, paralysis and, ultimately death.
The disease announced itself internationally in 1939, when, on his 36th birthday, New York Yankees star Lou Gehrig — known as the "Iron Horse" because he played in an astonishing 2,130 consecutive games, a record that would stand for more than half a century — was diagnosed with the condition. Gehrig died in 1941 at age 37, and one of the greatest players in his sport's history gave his fabled name to an infamous scourge, one that, according to government statistics, kills around 25,000 people per year, though the cause of death for those with ALS is sometimes attributed to something else.
ALS doesn't just kill; it first imprisons its victim and their loved ones. No one signs up to watch the love of their life die.
"I've been married 26 years," Hanford said. "The last five years have been watching her die before my eyes."
Andrea Douglas Hanford, now 65, had caught his eye nearly three decades before, when she was a young teacher and he was a warehouse worker in Belle Glade.
"I saw her and I said, 'I want that girl,'" Hanford said.
He got her, and he said he thrilled at watching his polished, always put-together wife advance in her career with the Palm Beach County School District, where she worked as a behavioral management trainer. She was diagnosed in 2019. Hanford fought to accept it.
"It's rough, man," he said.
Now, getting ready to go anywhere was a challenge. "I was angry," Hanford said. "I was getting mad at her, yelling 'hurry up.' And then I realized she couldn't. I had to go off and find myself. Talked to the Lord."
Ana Casey, 57, has also relied on her faith as she helps her husband, 64-year old Daniel, navigate primary lateral scheloris, which, like ALS, saps a person of their ability to speak, swallow, breathe and talk. PLS progresses more slowly than ALS, but it forces upon caregivers many of the same terrible choices ALS caregivers confront. Stay? Watch your loved one wither? Make that your life?
Daniel Casey is a life-of-the-party type of guy, even now, four years after his PLS diagnosis. Using two walking poles, it was he who stood at the starting line Saturday, raising his arms and firing up those who gathered to participate in the walk, which, by 11 a.m., had raised nearly $150,000.
"Hey, I'm here," Daniel had told the crowd earlier as Ana held the microphone for him. "I'm fighting. This disease robs you of almost everything, including relationships. A part of what makes it brutally nightmarish is that no one knows what you're trying to say. People don't know there's a person in there."
Ana knows her husband of 30 years is there, fighting to stay as vibrant as he can. So, she fights, too.
"The symptoms started about nine years ago," she said. "We just didn't know what they were."
Her husband, a construction worker who didn't shrink from physical labor, suddenly fought to talk steadily, to walk and breathe.
"It was shocking," Ana said. "It was devastating. It blindsided us."
Her religious faith sustained her as she watched Daniel struggle and joined the fight. "We know we're not alone," Ana said, describing how, despite the loss of Daniel's income, their household somehow persevered. "We've never gone without. It's like a miracle."
Even with his own religious faith, Tim Hanford struggled. Struggles still. "Some days, I don't know what to do," he said. "I don't sleep at night. I eat and sleep when the caretaker comes in."
Still, any thought of leaving Andrea to confront ALS alone is quickly dashed. He simply thinks of his own mother, who raised him and seven siblings as a seamstress as a single mother. She was a single mother because, after cancer forced the amputation of one her legs, his father left. He didn't know — or didn't care — that he was leaving a woman strong enough to raise eight children, all of whom would graduate from high school and none of whom would have trouble with the law.
"He said, 'I don't want no one-legged woman,'" Tim said. He looked through the crowd at his wife as she sat in a motorized chair. "I won't do her like that," he said. "I won't leave her."
Hanford's family and friends raised $13,000 for the fight against ALS, outstripping their goal of $10,000.
Like those ALS and PLS patients who could still walk or who had motorized chairs, and like the other caregivers who stood behind them and around them and smiled Saturday, Tim Hanford took his place behind a ceremonial ribbon marking the start of the walk.
Then the ribbon was cut, and Tim, smiling and waving, got behind his wife's chair and pushed.
Wayne Washington is a journalist covering West Palm Beach, Riviera Beach and race relations for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at Help support our work; subscribe today .
