BOYNTON BEACH — “In sickness and in health…”
Tim Hanford knows better than most, better than he’d like, that the vow isn’t just a collection of words spoken on a happy day. Ana Casey knows it, too.
Standing among the hundreds who gathered at Centennial Park and Ampitheater in Boynton Beach on Saturday for the ALS Association’s annual Walk to Defeat ALS, Hanford, 59, admitted there were times when he wanted to run from those words.
They closed in on him a few years ago as his wife, Andrea Douglas Hanford, struggled to walk steadily, fought to swallow. It was ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable neurological disorder that destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing muscle weakness, paralysis and, ultimately death.
The disease announced itself internationally in 1939, when, on his 36th birthday, New York Yankees star Lou Gehrig — known as the “Iron Horse” because he played in an astonishing 2,130 consecutive games, a record that would stand for more than half a century — was diagnosed with the condition. Gehrig died in 1941 at age 37, and one of the greatest players in his sport’s history gave his fabled name to an infamous scourge, one that, according to government statistics, kills around 25,000 people per year, though the cause of death for those with ALS is sometimes attributed to something else.