A Ludlow man was honoured by a memory walk.
Doug Jackson was born on Mill Street and suffered from both Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer’s disease before his death in 2021.
The walk had a healthy turnout and raised £1231.50 for the Alzheimer’s society, with a walk in Worcester the week before bringing the total up to £2733.
The event started at McConnel Ltd car park and took walkers past locations that were significant to Mr Jackson and his family such as Ludlow town centre as well as Ludlow Castle and the Readers House.
Mr Jackson worked as a costing engineer for McConnel Ltd, an agricultural machinery manufacturer in Ludlow, for over 40 years. The company started off the fundraising for the walk with a donation of £500 via the 'Memory Walk Ludlow' page on justgiving.com.
Mr Jackson's daughter, Kay Brearley and her husband Lee hosted their first successful walk in Worcester last year which had about 50 people involved and raised a total of £2,656 for the fight against Alzheimer’s.
His family said: "Doug began to realise something was wrong, he became confused and forgetful and for a man who had used his brain all his life, this was very frustrating for him and he was frightened.
"He declined quite rapidly after diagnosis both physically and mentally and we managed to get Doug and Molly moved to Worcester so we could look after him and support Molly more closely.
"In relation to the effect of Doug’s illness on our family, it meant that Molly became his full time carer and he soon became unable to carry out the simplest of tasks and began hallucinating and shaking.
"The hardest thing was seeing Doug sat in the chair but it wasn’t really him. It is terrible to watch this disease slowly destroy a person both physically and mentally. The person we knew was quickly vanishing and we were powerless to do anything about it.
"The medications he was prescribed adversely affected him and overall we felt very lonely however the Early Intervention Dementia Team at Kidderminster were amazing and gave us lots of support and direction."
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