Robert, often Bob, DeMarco handed away recently – and we have all missing a genuine affected individual chief, a tireless advocate, researcher, and supporter for Alzheimer’s caregivers, a gifted creator, and an inexhaustible speaker.
Bob never ever sought awards or recognition for his Alzheimer’s perform, but his legions of followers built certain his devotion and significantly-achieving impact were noticed. He won multiple WEGO Wellness Awards with his Alzheimer’s Reading Space site, Fb web page, and e mail team. Purely by word of mouth and the energy of his impressive information, he introduced hope, light-weight and a trove of practical guidance to thousands and thousands.
I am one of the luckiest of the thousands and thousands – Bob lived in my hometown of Delray Seaside, Florida. He moved to Delray Seashore in 2003, leaving powering a powerhouse economic solutions career to turn into Alzheimer’s caregiver for his mom Dottie. I achieved him after Dottie experienced handed, but he was even now fiercely committed to the Alzheimer’s group, and I requested him to have a beer with me.
That very first beer jointly lasted three several hours. Bob’s relentless curiosity and power ended up infectious – our extended talks ricocheted from research motor science to Delray politics to Alzheimer’s research and clinical trials to his vocation in New York. That 1st time and each individual time after, we would talk about Dottie as well how he experienced located so numerous techniques to realize “Dottie’s World” as he referred to as it, and to make her lifestyle
with Alzheimer’s not just secure but worthwhile and content and enjoyable.
Bob passed that wisdom, that irreplaceable appreciate, and tricky-received practical experience, along to every person struggling with Alzheimer’s and to those people of us at Health Union WEGO who experienced the possibility to know him individually.
I spoke to him just a working day just before he handed, and his only regret was that he hadn’t accomplished enough – that if he’d performed much more to combat his cancer, he could have performed additional for us all. We talked about that, and I did the ideal I could to convey to him that Bob’s Planet really had designed the globe a better location.
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Bob was a phenomenal Alzheimer’s affected individual leader and a collaborative member of (legacy) WEGO Wellbeing. The winner of the 2016 WEGO Health Awards Best In Display: Blog site, Bob held webinars and are living occasions for individual leaders to study from his individual leader knowledge. You can view 1 of his previous webinars here.
