Team Provencher Walks to End Alzheimer's

Even rain couldn’t stop “Team Provencher” from participating in the Alzheimer’s Association’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s on Saturday in Enfield - where the namesake is from.

Donna Wehr’s father, Tim Provencher, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago and went into a nursing home about a year ago. Her grandmother, Olivia Provencher, was lost to Alzheimer’s. The day of the walk would have been her 100th birthday.

For these people, Wehr and 20 other members of her family walked approximately 2.5 miles.

“We’ve always been talking about doing something to support the cause,” Wehr said. “We saw how bad the disease is and what it does to families.”

Wehr, who moved to Ellington just over a year ago, said that she wasn’t sure what kind of response they were going to get, but that everyone wanted to be involved.

Robert, Wehr’s 9-year-old son, even did some fundraising of his own. He used a big bucket to collect spare change, including 1,700 pennies, and ended up raising $25.67.

“Whenever somebody comes over, we ask them,” he said. “(It came from) mostly family, and we looked around the house for extra change that we didn’t use. I went to Big Y and dumped it into the machine and then I donated how much I got from that.”

In all, Team Provencher raised over $3,000.

For the walk, the team made a sign and some buttons with Tim Provencher’s picture on them.

In addition the walk, there was a tribute ceremony to honor those affected by Alzheimer’s Disease.

“The ceremony was nice,” Wehr said. “Jerry Kristafer from 102.9 DRC FM led it and spoke about Alzheimer’s in his family, and a man who was diagnosed in his 50s also spoke about what it is like to be diagnosed and how it changes the way people treat him. Then they had everyone hold up their flowers (pinwheels) by color and they were collected by volunteers as we started the walk. When we crossed the finish line, we were greeted by all of the flowers planted in a “garden” of our flowers.”

According to Wehr, her father was very athletic, even being inducted into the Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame with the 1953 Thompsonville Little League Alumni State Championship team.

“That’s what makes it so sad because he was so athletic,” he said. “He was always captain in high school – baseball, basketball, football, and coaching everything. He never got sick, then it just hit one day. It’s tough.”

She then looked at Robert and said, “We’re gonna make this go away, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

Robert says that it’s one of his goals to see Alzheimer’s cured, and seeing that he likes science, his mother doesn’t see why it couldn’t be him who comes up with the cure.

According to Christianne Kovel from the Alzheimer’s Association Connecticut Chapter, several hundred people attended the walk to raise awareness and funds to fight Alzheimer's disease. 

Kovel said that on walk day, the Enfield site had raised $30,000. She added that if people still wanted to contribute, they can through the end of the month by going to www.alz.org/ct.