[D]iane Wolk worked as an educator for almost four decades, starting as a teacher in 1972, chairing the state Board of Education in the late 1990s and capping her career as principal of Rutland’s Northeast Primary School in the early 2000s. Perhaps that’s why it was inevitable when, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease on her 57th birthday, she decided to turn the situation into a “teachable moment.”
“I want to take this time of my life,” she told a reporter after learning the news in 2007, “and do what’s important.”
Wolk began by sharing her story — one that ended this past weekend with her death at age 64.
“In her final days, weeks and years she has conducted herself as she always did throughout her life: with grace, dignity and more concern for others than for herself,” her husband, Castleton State College President David Wolk, wrote in a note to family and friends. “She has led a model life and she will leave a remarkable legacy.”
During an interview nearly a decade ago, Diane Wolk could recite her long resume from memory, right down to her doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Vermont. But several years earlier, she had started forgetting or misplacing simple things like her purse and appointment calendar.
Although some of that comes with aging, she was in her early 50s and looked younger because of her long blonde hair. Juggling family and career, “I just thought it was stress,” she recalled in 2008.
But the warning signs continued. She’d become disoriented, unknowingly repeat herself in conversations, feel her mood swing for no apparent reason.
Doctors at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington tested her for Alzheimer’s in 2007. Their diagnosis came on her birthday, December 10.
William Pendlebury, director of the hospital’s Memory Center, told Wolk she was susceptible because she had a specific gene that increased her risk. (She was one of about 400,000 Americans under age 65 in her situation.) But medical science, he continued, has yet to completely understand Alzheimer’s cause and potential cure.
As many as 5 million Americans are living with the disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Past ranks have included presidents (Ronald Reagan), activists (Rosa Parks), artists (Norman Rockwell) and seeming superhumans who can part the Red Sea (Charlton Heston). But since most people know little about the ailment (other than it still awaits a cure), they aren’t always comfortable talking about it.
Diane Wolk needed time to digest the news. But soon after hearing it — her case started as “mild” — she was determined to do something positive.
Consider Christmas 2007, just two weeks after she was diagnosed. Wolk and her husband had agreed they had enough material comforts and therefore wouldn’t exchange gifts. So why, he wondered at the time, was she handing him a present?
“I thought we had a deal?” he asked her.
“I know,” she replied. “I forgot.”
Their four children fell silent, unsure what to say. But with a smile and a playful shrug, she showed them how to acknowledge her condition with honesty and humor.
“I have Alzheimer’s,” she recalled saying aloud for the first time. “I finally was acknowledging it was real. That was a liberating moment I’ll always remember.”
Wolk went on to become the first participant in a manufacturer-sponsored University of Vermont study of a new Alzheimer’s drug. Shortly thereafter, she told her story publicly before joining an estimated 400 family members and friends at the 2008 Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk in Rutland.
“Walk With Wolk,” their T-shirts said.
Seeking to fund research, she helped raise more than $10,000.
David Wolk has spent the past several years commuting between his job at the 2,000-student college in Rutland County and Florida, where his wife relocated to take part in one of the largest Alzheimer’s drug trials in the country. He tapped the Internet to learn about the disease — he can tell you how the brain has 100 billion nerve cells, how Alzheimer’s takes aim at them, how people affected have yet to find a way to stop it — as well as to communicate with family and friends.
“We have gone through stages of anger (briefly) and frustration (less briefly) and, amazingly quickly, acceptance,” he wrote in an email upon his wife’s diagnosis.
David Wolk went on to say his wife had retained her intelligence — something that was both a blessing and a curse.
“Because she’s so smart,” he wrote, “she knows what’s happening to her.”
But Diane Wolk resolved to stay strong.
“I really have to think about what I’m doing,” she said in 2008. “I have to structure my day. I make lists of things that need to be done, and I keep a calendar book. I’m learning how to get and keep myself as organized as I can.”
Wolk was aware of the challenges ahead. Up until her diagnosis, she had served as a hospice volunteer — ironically, for a patient in a later stage of Alzheimer’s. But she and her family focused on the positives, right up to her death on Independence Day at the Lexington Park Memory Care facility in Lady Lake, Florida.
A memorial service will be held in Florida at a later date, with more information and an online condolence page available at the Beyers Funeral Home website thevillagesladylake.beyersfuneralhomeandcrematory.com.
“It is preferred that there will be no flowers, just fond memories,” reports her obituary, which adds that donations can be made to the Dr. Diane M. Wolk Scholarship for Promising Educators at Castleton State College, 62 Alumni Drive, Castleton, VT 05735.
David Wolk said before his wife lost consciousness, she was communicating through simple nods. He especially remembers one set of his voiced questions and her silent, shake-of-her-head answers:
“Are you in pain? No.”
“Are you OK? Yes.”
“Can I give you something to drink? No.”
“Do you know me? No.”
“Are you at peace? Yes.”
Kevin O’Connor, a former staffer of the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, is a Brattleboro-based writer. Email: kevinoconnorvt@gmail.com
