At Alzheimer's Foundation walk in Eisenhower Park, family and carevigers find support for a difficult journey

A few weeks before her father died last December, Laura Brancato watched as her 10-year-old son Ethan taught his grandfather how to throw a baseball again.

“It was a really meaningful moment,” she recalled Saturday at the start of the 2-mile Alzheimer’s Walk in the Park in East Meadow.

Her father, Richard Brancato, a longtime men’s clothing salesman who founded Domino Men’s Shop in Long Island malls, began to suffer forgetfulness and inattentiveness in his early 60s. They were the first signs of vascular dementia, a brain condition that often goes with Alzheimer's disease. He was 76 when he died. 

“He had a loving family that was very supportive,” said Laura, who lives in Westchester. “We were really heartbroken for him but did what we could to make sure that he was doing as well as he could for as long as he could.”

She carried her father’s memory as she walked with her three children — Tate, Ethan and Natalie — and more than 100 others through Eisenhower Park on an overcast morning to support the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. A photo of Richard Brancato hung among a dozen  others  in the gazebo at the Respite Care Relief Park, an area the organization unveiled last year where caregivers can bring their loved ones.

Chuck Fuschillo, the organization’s president and CEO, said more than 60,000 Long Islanders and 400,000 people across New York live with Alzheimer’s disease, a brain disorder that is the most common cause of dementia. He described the group’s model as “care, education and research.”

“We’re with people all the way on their journey,” he said.

The organization plans to open a new daily therapeutic and dementia training center in Amityville that will be one of the largest of its kind on Long Island, he said.

Dwight Gooden, an all-star pitcher for the 1986 World Series champion Mets, signed autographs before the walk and threw out a ceremonial first pitch to Jesse Feiner, 9.

Many in the crowd wore Mets apparel before putting on T-shirts with the slogan “Strikeout Alzheimer’s.”

Gooden recalled his father’s message to him at a young age about having an impact on other people’s lives. He challenged the walkers to put a smile on a stranger’s face.

“Today is not about baseball, it’s about you guys,” he said.

David Feiner, Jesse’s father, said he’s been fundraising for the Alzheimer's cause for more than a decade. His mother, Barbara, was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's when she was 65. She’s now 79.

Feiner, of Port Washington, said when he first got involved, he was unsure how to deal with the diagnosis. He sought out a community of others going through a similar situation to better understand “how to deal with it emotionally and psychologically.”

Another walker, Michele Caputo, of Hicksville, said she lost her mother, Helen, to Alzheimer’s in January. Her mother was 82 and an avid baseball fan who supported both the Mets and Yankees. When the teams played a Subway Series, she rooted for each team to win an equal number of games, Caputo said.

She said her family all helped support her mother, and that connecting with other families at an event like the Alzheimer's walk can be beneficial.

"The people here, we don't know each other, but we have something very important in common," she said.

By Joe Werkmeister

joe.werkmeister@newsday.com

Joe Werkmeister covers the towns of Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island. He is a graduate of St. Bonaventure University and previously worked as the editor of two North Fork community newspapers.

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