Grammy winner adding star power to Alzheimer's walk
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- There’s a little more than one week before the Central Ohio Walk to End Alzheimer’s, and this year’s walk will have a little star power.
Grammy award-winning singer and Broadway star Maureen McGovern will have her own team.
McGovern is now living in central Ohio and is living with Alzheimer’s.
McGovern's apartment is packed with memorabilia and, for now, with memories.
She was a toddler when she learned to harmonize.
Watch: Grammy winner, Broadway singer adds star power to Alzheimer's walk
“My dad sang with the barbershop quartet in our dining room,” she said. “Dining room, and I would, was this tall and I would go from every of everybody, singing and singing.”
"Story I heard from my parents was that she was singing long before she could talk or read,” Patt Sweeney, McGovern’s sister and advocate, said. “She'd be singing ‘Goodnight Irene’ in her crib.
It was the beginning of a life in song and continued with her first big break on Broadway.
“That was fun,” McGovern said. “I admit that was fun. It was hard to go. So much to have to do. ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ on Broadway, on Broadway.”
But the number one hit “The Morning After” from the 1972 movie “The Poseiden Adventure” made her a household name and a Grammy winner. She starred in countless Broadway hits, recorded more than a dozen studio albums, and even appears as a singing nun in “Airplane.”
McGovern was always singing until she lost the lyrics; until Alzheimer’s pushed the words away.
“I've sung so many songs and knew the words and, you know, just big, big, big, big memorized lines, memory lines, and then I'd get stuck, you know,” she said. “Because I sang for ages, just fine, you know? Yeah. And it was fun, but then it was panic.
“And I thought I worked so hard on that, I don’t want to make a fool of myself,” she added.
“She sought out some evaluation and initially they said it was posterior cortical atrophy and that and but as time goes on and time has gone on, they've done more brain scans and memories and imaging to see that it's more of the brain that's involved,” Sweeney said of her sister’s diagnosis. “It's all of the brain that's involved. And there's a lot of spatial issue, visual spatial issues and the cognition.
McGovern is no longer a professional vocal artist; instead, she’s an activist, vowing to raise funds for Alzheimer’s.
“Her whole career, she has been doing this” Sweeney said. “She's worked with the Muscular Dystrophy Association. She's worked with AIDS. She's worked with prisons, with hospices. She's, she has always taken her talent to people to lift them up instead of wallowing. And when she was first diagnosed, that's exactly what she said about this: ‘I need to help people understand what Alzheimer's is.’”
“I can stil do whatever I can still do, and so it’s, I just keep trying to keep far forward,” McGovern said. “I mean, I’m grateful I’m here, you know?”
The Central Ohio Walk to End Alzheimer’s is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 13, at the Lawn at CAS. Check-in begins at noon and the opening ceremony is scheduled for 2 p.m. For more information, click here.