By Khalida Sarwari
The students in the science department at UC-Berkeley were putting on a Christmas party where they’d be lampooning their professors, and Marion, a Ph.D. student and one of the brightest in the department, had invited everyone to her place to plan the party. It was there that Marion’s cat, Methionine, took an immediate liking to Kendric, and as it happened, Kendric found himself taking an immediate liking to Marion.
“Her cat loved me so much, I couldn’t go away; I had to stay around,” said Kendric, who at the time was attending Cal to complete his post-doctoral fellowship in biochemistry.
There was so much to like about Marion. She was pleasant, intelligent, pretty and fun to be with. What’s more, they had common interests. Or she quickly adapted to his interests–like giving up opera for Dixieland jazz–and Kendric adapted to hers.
Marion remembers thinking Kendric was “awfully tall” and had good ideas.
“He was very smart and he was one of the best people in the class, except for me,” she said.
Nine days before Valentine’s Day, on Feb. 5, 1955, Kendric and Marion Smith were married. Proving that certain memories truly last a lifetime, they both remember the comical incident of Kendric’s mother getting lost on her way to the wedding and showing up late. Kendric also remembers Marion walking down the aisle without her glasses on and how he was unable to recognize her.
“I wanted to look nice,” Marion explained to her husband. “I did look nice.”
“Yes, you did,” Kendric said, nodding.
Shortly after they moved to the Terraces of Los Gatos three years ago, Marion was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She transferred to the Grove, the Terraces’ memory support unit, last July. But the signs started five years ago when Marion, who was a docent at the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford, began relying more and more on the notes next to the pieces on the wall instead of speaking from memory. She would be forgetful about other things, too, and her driving skills began deteriorating to the point where a doctor ordered her to stop driving altogether.
But long before Alzheimer’s took its hold on Marion, she was a star scientist at Stanford University, where she and Kendric spent several decades conducting research and teaching, she in the neurology department and he in the radiation oncology department.
They have two daughters, Nancy and Martha. Nancy, 56, would go on to become an electrical engineer who works for Hewlett-Packard in Washington and has three children, while Martha, 55, works as a clinical psychologist in the student health center at the University of Montana and has two kids.
The Smiths stayed at Stanford until they retired, living in a house built by well-known real estate developer Joseph Eichler in the part of campus called “the faculty ghetto.” In their free time, Kendric and Marion would go bird-watching around the world, from Europe to Asia to South America, the U.S. and everywhere in between. And before that, it was backpacking or spending time at their cabin near Mount Lassen, where they’d go on long hikes with their girls.
Their hobbies are a little different now. About three days a week they go on early morning walks and then meet with friends over coffee before doing chair exercises. They have dinner together every night in the main dining room at the Terraces. Marion said it’s been difficult time not being able to sleep next to her husband.
“I hate it,” she said.
Marion is involved in yoga, tai chi and art history classes. She’s in a book club and piano group with about 10 other ladies at the Terraces, but her memory loss makes it difficult to retain information. So she’ll go to the book club meetings and try her best to participate in the conversations, and attend the piano group gatherings, but no longer as a participant.
“I can read, but I can’t always remember what I’m reading,” she said. “I’m having trouble reading a book and getting a story out of it.”
Kendric writes Marion’s activities daily on a white board that hangs in her room, but there are days where even that’s not helpful to her.
“She’s going downhill pretty fast, but we’re both 88 years old,” said Kendric. “I’m going downhill, too.”
Being a caretaker does take a toll on him at times, Kendric admitted. He wonders how many of his health issues are caused by the stress he feels from helping take care of his wife. To cope, he involves himself in his own hobbies. He is the editor of a textbook on photobiology and maintains several websites.
“I’m able to get quietude from doing the things I want to do,” Kendric said, “but I spend an awful amount of time with her–as a caregiver or as a husband–because I feel that’s a responsibility when you’re married; you take care of your spouse.”
For their 60th anniversary, Kendric planned on taking Marion to Billy’s Boston Chowder House in Los Gatos. She likes Dungeness crab, he said, and he was hoping Billy’s would have it on their menu this time of year.
Kendric and Marion’s life together–like most people’s–hasn’t been without a fair amount of trials and tribulations, but they’ve chosen to stick it out. The secret to their longevity, Kendric said, is persistence.
“You can make anything work, I guess, if you try hard enough,” he said. “We’ve had our ups and downs like any marriage. You just work at it.”
Their anniversary day fell on a Thursday, and that evening Kendric stopped by Marion’s room at the end of the hallway to pick her up for dinner. While she couldn’t remember much of her wedding day, she hasn’t forgotten the reason she’s been with Kendric for 60 years after that day.
“I still love you,” she told her husband. After a pause, Marion said, “I don’t know if he loves me.”
“I’m still here,” Kendric said.
- • • • •
On the other side of the Grove are two rooms, one occupied by Barbara Shaw, 82, and the other by her husband, Tom Shaw, 86. Though she may be in the early stages of dementia, Barbara says she doesn’t need to live at the Grove, but she’s chosen to in order to look after Tom. She helps supervise him during the day, but she’s hired additional caretakers to help out.
“He wanted very much that I move down here with him,” she said. “I do the best I can, and make sure he’s happy–and he is,” Barbara said.
Barbara, who remains as stylish as ever with hands bedecked by rings, regrets sacrificing her freedom when she moved to the Grove. She has to check in with the staff when she leaves the facility to see her friends and is restricted from doing certain activities she used to enjoy, such as cooking. But there are other things she’s insisted on continuing to do, like reading and writing. Barbara takes pride in being chief editor of the Terraces monthly in-house magazine, “Grover’s A Go Go.”
Years ago, Barbara worked as a feature writer for the San Francisco Examiner, while Tom worked for Crown-Zellerbach. Their love story can be traced to a bar in San Francisco, where they met for the first time in the mid 1950s. Barbara, who’s originally from Lincoln, Neb., had moved to the city with four of her friends to pursue a career in journalism soon after graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1954. Tom, who was from Portland, Ore., and had attended Stanford where he was a starting quarterback, was working as a radar operator at the time.
“He just had all the properties you’d want in a person to be married to,” Barbara said. “He was a kind man, a very bright man. He liked family.”
Tom remembers Barbara as a bright and approachable young woman.
“She was very easy to talk to, which is what appealed to me,” Tom said. “She was a person you could talk to about problems.”
They got married in Lincoln in 1957 and then lived for a time in San Francisco, Daly City and Whittier before eventually returning to the Bay Area and settling in Lucas Valley in Marin for more than 40 years, where they raised their three children–Billy, Betsy and Steve, all three of whom are in their 50s. Billy works for the state government in Sacramento, while his sister Betsy recently retired from marketing for Apple and now lives in Los Gatos. Their brother, Steve, is president of the Claremont Country Club in Oakland. Between the three of them, they have four kids.
In their heyday, Tom and Barbara traveled together, founded a tennis club and enjoyed swimming and entertaining friends. They faced challenges like everyone else, Barbara said, such as those associated with aging parents and raising a family. But they persevered because “we just didn’t believe that you do anything else,” she said.
“We’ve had a good life together,” Barbara said, and her husband agreed. “Yes, we have,” said Tom.
The Shaws moved to the residential living unit at the Terraces four years ago and then transferred to Grove a year ago. Like most Alzheimer’s patients, Tom started showing signs of forgetfulness and his motor skills had started deteriorating. While they still enjoy having lunch and dinner together and seeing friends, Tom is no longer able to participate in every outing or activity.
“He needs more sleep than I do,” said Barbara.
Taking care of her husband isn’t always easy, but theirs has been a happy marriage and she doesn’t mind the sacrifices she’s had to make, said Barbara. And when you’re happy, it shows, she said.
“I think if you have a good marriage; it’s a hard thing to beat, because that’s the way you’re going to get through life,” Barbara said.
Link: Couples share stories of true love, and dealing with Alzheimer’s
