Walking for the Cure for ALS: My Brother and Lou Gehrig's Disease

Saturday, tomorrow, is the Walk in Kansas City. (Update-pics and vid from the walk HERE))
Raising money and awareness, fighting the disease of ALS, (see http://marysbeagooddogblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/lou-gherigs-disease.html) is not something i have been devoted to, like many wonderful people. I am very glad many work so hard; it is a crushing disease.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

You can support me tomorrow, with your good thoughts, by clicking on sites that teach about the disease promoting awareness, by donating your Hard Earned Treasure at my site.

Donate HERE.

I rarely donate to these requests even from loved friends with causes i respect--and i do not expect you to. We are all on tight budgets.  I have recently found that many folks have lost a person they loved to ALS.
So, i give you all the opportunity and if nothing more, you can learn a little about the disease.

Steve with one of the many cakes his two older sisters were always making for him...

I want to tell you about my brother, Steve.
Steve was less than a year younger than I.
It is hard to describe how he was special: he was gentle of Heart, he was Hilarious.

He was very nice to look at; this must have had as much to do with his interior loveliness as his exterior fineness.
He was very nice to listen to; he was not loud or brash but spoke deliberately and with great wit.
One might surmise his wonderfulness by the wonderful woman he married and the fabulous children he raised.
Our family laughs at all the pics of him and our other brother with cakes- since they had older sisters who were at that Cake-Baking Age (from 8 years on...), there were always plenty of cakes.



Steve left behind two daughters who are living good lives of service. I am so grateful to his wife for working on this cause.

Ja Lee said, "The process of life, from youth...to death, is to create something beautiful--the Soul."

And everyone who had the good fortune to know Steve, knows that he had a Beautiful Soul.

It did not seem possible that our lives were to go on without his life here nearby. The truth we were left with was that his Soul's work was finished, and that ours was unfinished.

I looked at a picture of Steve

feeding the dog, Duke, with a fork.

He is looking with total appreciation and love for the dog-spirit of Duke. I think he also knew that some kids would crack up at a dog eating with a fork.

When Steve looked at you, he really looked at you. Because of his gentleness and his natural humility, when you did meet his eyes, he was right there: transparent as could be.

I believe that my brother was born with an already wonderful, beautiful nonviolent soul. That's why he loved children and animals--they were transparent and vulnerable with him.

He was always creating, thinking, figuring out some way to tweak, to improve, to enhance. Whether it was skiing, running, training, cooking, playing, he was always finding ways to improve. He figured out that if he trained by running downhill, he could hyperstimulate some muscles in such a way as to increase his speed. Now, years later, that is exactly how sprinters train.

He loved boating, skiing, hanging out on the water. His kids believe, and so do i, that he is the one who invented wearing your life jacket like a pair of shorts or a diaper, allowing one to sit in the water with one's beer.

If anyone did not love this guy, i never knew it. The fruits of his life were peace, humor, creativity, kindness, gentleness, love.

I told his daughters they never had to settle for anything less than a good and peaceful man; their father showed them what that looks like.

I could go on.

Think of Steve on Saturday morning, as the families and friends of all those affected by ALS walk, run, roll, and cycle in Kansas City.

with Grandpa.