Meyers Leonard Character Analysis

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Meyers Leonard, an NBA player for the Portland Trail Blazers, helped his team beat the Memphis Grizzlies by scoring 13 points and collecting 13 rebounds in one game, but he would have given it all back to have overcome Alzheimer’s and the effect it has had on his family. In a recent visit to watch Meyers play live, he and his grandmother Rita Douma sat down to talk with Lesley Yanak, Director of Marketing for Koelsch Senior Communities and Chrissy Hall, Executive Director of Silver Creek Inn Memory Care Community in Mesa Arizona, about the disease that took the life of his grandfather Butch in January 2016.
Butch Douma was a brilliant man. As a teenager, he was an all-state center and earned a scholarship to play basketball at a university, …show more content…

“Going through that night drive, so black, without knowing where I was going, really scared me and I cried and prayed the whole way…but you know, when somebody tells me the world is trouble I tell them how good people are... People helped us, and they didn’t know us from Adam,” said Rita.
After driving home, Butch’s memory loss in conjunction with Rita’s health challenges resulted in Butch moving into Silver Creek Inn Memory Care Community in Mesa, Arizona, where he was cared for by a loving and caring staff in tandem with his wife Rita, who frequently visited.
“I recently bought him coloring books because he’s an artist. I thought that would bring back his artistic talents. He used to do crossword puzzles, but they became too hard for him. This man who flew and refurbished aircraft could no longer do the simplest of things. Alzheimer's is such an ugly disease. With other diseases, people know what will happen. This is a slow, ugly deterioration of a man who was so brilliant, so talented and used to say there weren’t enough hours in a day,” said

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