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Community Corner

Winchester Residents Walk to End Alzheimer's

This Sunday, Sept. 25, over 100 Winchester-area residents will walk to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer's research.

Donna von Halle is getting ready to lace up her sneakers and walk to Boston this Sunday. She has helped organize over 100 people to form Team Winchester at this year’s Greater Boston Walk to End Alzheimer’s on Sept. 25. Von Halle is also personally affected by the disease: her mother-in-law suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Despite the personal connection, von Halle never expected to be walking for Alzheimer’s until last spring, when she attended a cocktail party at the house of her friend and neighbor, Jan McCafferty. McCafferty lost both her parents to the disease, and is now on the Leadership Council of the Massachusetts/New Hampshire Alzheimer’s Association.

McCafferty's spring cocktail party was designed to raise awareness of and gauge local interest in Alzheimer’s work. She brought in speakers, including experts in Alzheimer’s, as well as a person living with Alzheimer’s. The event piqued a great deal of local interest, and brought von Halle on as an organizer.

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Since then, the group has organized the Team Winchester walk event, put posters and yard signs around town, and staffed a booth at .

Von Halle said she was surprised by the number of people who have approached her to tell their own stories of family members and friends impacted by Alzheimer’s. What started out as an event made up of close friends and neighbors has grown to include a much wider circle of people, and has become more personal as von Halle has heard how Alzheimer’s has affected the lives of so many others in town.

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The Walk to End Alzheimer’s will begin and end at Canal Park at the CambridgeSide Galleria in Cambridge and includes two course options. The two-mile “Hope” walk will go under the Longfellow Bridge, continue on Memorial Drive, and turn back at the Charles River Yacht Club. The six-mile “Spirit” course will continue over the Massachusetts Ave. bridge into Boston, turn onto Storrow Drive and go to the Esplanade before turning around and following the same path back to Canal Park.

“What’s great about the walk is it’s very family-friendly,” said von Halle, adding the two-mile course is perfect for kids in strollers and families with young children. 

The walk has pulled in the children of the von Halle and McCafferty families as well. Von Halle’s 9-year-old twins will join her and her husband on the walk.

“It’s nice to have them learn about this and learn to help others,” von Halle said, adding that McCafferty has challenged her middle-school-age daughter to recruit friends to help out as well.

Early Sunday morning, before the walk, the Winchester team will meet up as a group at a neighborhood house. They’ll distribute special hats made for the walk. After that, von Halle said, folks can grab bagels and carpool or caravan to Cambridge for the walk. She hopes to keep the whole group together if possible.

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