Bonnie Shepherd’s got a schedule that could frazzle a much younger person.
The Salt Lake octogenarian has a Pilates class four times a week and walks on the other days, meets friends at least weekly for lunch, facilitates three support groups, serves on the board of the Utah Alzheimer’s Association and has served on the board of the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (which her husband Ned had before he died). She also goes with a pal to any Jazz concert she can find. She serves, too, on the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias State Council, one of the members who helped write the state’s forward-looking plan to deal with the expected tsunami of age-related neurocognitive decline as Utah ages.
She and two other friends check in with each other at least daily. Then there’s family time. She had been married and he was widowed, so when she and Ned married, they created a blended family that included the two children they each had and she’s still busy doing family things with them and with her extended family…