In Loving Memory: Support for Parkinson's Research

Lives Well Lived

Ruth Winder was born in Nazi Germany in 1938. Her childhood was defined by the war. She was in Cologne the day it was leveled to the ground, and her earliest memories were filled with air raid sirens and mad scrambles for bomb shelters. Alan Winder meanwhile grew up an ocean away in abject poverty in the South Bronx, without a father, dreaming of a life filled with something more. And in the wake of that chaos, they improbably found each other. They met at a club in New York City in 1964, married in 1967, and set about building a life together that was filled with joys and sorrows, as lives are.

Alan and Ruth both believed in the power of decency. And they also believed in all four of us, their children, even at our worst. They always believed we had the ability to do better – that if we worked, and studied, we could make something of ourselves. Something that mattered, something that would make the world a little bit less terrible. Our parents sacrificed to give us all a better life, the life they never had as children. They scrimped and saved and mostly challenged us to be good people, to go out into the world and make some kind of difference. Neither of them loved the spotlight, and both of them cared much more for the comfort of the people around them.

Ruth's life was cut short by the truly terrible complications of Parkinson's dementia; she passed away on August 23. Alan followed her exactly three weeks later, on September 13, from medical complications following a heart attack. Their love for each other was unshakable, and true, and in the end they simply couldn’t bear to live apart. At the same time, they would admonish us to carry on, to live our lives, to fill our days with meaning and kindness and to honor their memories by doing our best to do better.

So on that note, let’s do that. Let's raise a bit of money for Parkinson's Disease research, through the Michael J Fox Foundation -- a charity that gets a 93% score and a four-star rating on Charity Navigator, and an A+ on charitywatch.org. Parkinson's is a truly vicious and terrible illness, and we'd be thrilled to see it cured in our lifetime.