Barb Binkley and Don Cortez have a lot in common. Both are business owners, both live in Livingston County. Both lost their mothers to Alzheimer s.
This year Binkley and Cortez are co-chairing the Brighton Walk to End Alzheimer s for the Alzheimer s Association.
Binkley s mother, Elizabeth Laughery, died in 2013 after a four-year battle with Alzheimer s at the age of 84. Binkley said her father, Robert, soon started showing signs of memory loss following his wife s death. He died in 2018 at the age of 88 from dementia. It’s not the way you want to leave this world. I feel like in other situations, where you receive a diagnosis and you are told you only have a limited time left, you have time to get your stuff together and say what you want to say to people, she said. With this, it just takes you. The mental capacity is just gone.