Glen Campbell’s Legacy Lives On

It was sad news for home health care patients in Canon City when they found out about the passing of country music legend Glen Campbell. His openness about his Alzheimer's diagnosis has influenced the way people talk about the disease.  

Glen Campbell's Final Gift

The country legend's legacy includes his bracing honesty (and enduring good humor) in facing Alzheimer's

As fellow musicians, actors and even former presidents reacted to the news of Glen Campbell’s death Tuesday, appreciation poured in for the gentlemanly, apple-cheeked singer and guitar picker, a session musician-turned-recording and film star whose ability to fuse genres helped give a later generation of performers a wider audience.

But Campbell’s final contribution — openly sharing his experience with a disease that affects 5.5 million Americans — spoke more to the strength of his character than it did to his wide-ranging musical talent. 

Officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2011, Campbell swiftly set off on a goodbye tour, with a five-week adieu turning into a 15-city marathon. Ronald Petersen, a neurologist who treated Campbell at the Mayo Clinic, says that as bold as it was of Campbell to go public with his diagnosis at the time (something that very few celebrities choose to do), it was “additionally courageous, and important, of him to allow a film crew to document what’s happening to him on the road as the disease progresses.” The resulting documentary, Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, was released in 2014.

While the disease was “pretty well established” by the time Campbell was treating crowds to renditions of Rhinestone Cowboy or Southern Nights, he showed fans and the public alike “that people with this kind of impairment can still have quality of life, and that they can do the things they enjoy … with the appropriate supports,” says Petersen. The film also showed the very forgiving response of fans when Campbell, then struggling with tasks as simple as finding a hotel room bathroom, tripped up on lyrics or, say, made a nonsensical statement from the stage.

“They were endeared to him and cared so much,” Petersen says. “They weren’t judging him, or anything of the sort.” While some of that had to do with the fans’ love of Campbell — a nice guy even to the bitter end of his treatment, notes Petersen — the response isn’t that unlike what many patients encounter when they let others in on their disease, he says.

Read the full article here: Country Singer Glen Campbell Dies at Age 81 - AARP http://bit.ly/2hTiyo2

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