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My two brothers were in town over the weekend and as usual we started to talk about our parents and growing up. I am the oldest, my other brother is five years younger and my third brother is 18 years younger. I found it interesting how we all remember our father. I noticed a difference in assessment of my dad’s intellectual abilities. My youngest brother felt that my dad’s lack of education, a high school dropout, contributed to his Alzheimer disease late in life. The middle brother did not agree but thought his lack of education contributed to senility. I disagreed with both and believed that my dad had a high intellect despite his lack of education.
We all can agree that my dad was a gifted worker until his late seventies. He could fix or build just about everything. He knew about electricity, carpentry, landscaping, and plumbing. He was an all around home improvement person. In fact when he retired from maintenance work at a local hospital he was in great demand as a handyman by the doctors and nurses he worked with. He could build a recreational room and finish it off which he did in our childhood house.
I remember once we were living in Madison and my parents in Brookfield when we wanted an all purpose recreational room or bed room build in part of our large basement. My dad came, took measurements, made a few notes, purchased products and build four walls in our basement. He accomplished a similar feat when we wanted a big deck at our cottage on the lake. From the smallest job, fixing a leaking facet to a large job like building an addition my dad could do all.
To me this is an intellectual gift of mind. I have the same tools, or even better, than my dad had but could not accomplish what he did. In the late seventies when he developed dementia and started to lose his memory of how to do things it was a real tragedy. When he could not even work on his own house, start his lawnmower or work building bicycle from parts at the junk yard, his hobby, he got discouraged and frustrated. Work was a good part of his life so after my mother died he only lived about another eight months.
All the memory test my dad took with me accompanying him when his brain was starting to suffer dementia had really nothing to do with intellect. I know this now not only intellectually but also experimentally. Worried that my forgetting was onset to Alzheimer I took a four hour memory test recently. It was a lot more extensive than any test my dad took but had nothing to do with intellect. I was worried I did not do to well and was relieved when the doctor called to say I did not have any signs of the onset of Alzheimer.
My dad was a very quiet and subservient person, especially to my mother, and maybe that is why my brothers compared his lack of education with his intellectual abilities. I have earned a B.A. and three Masters Degrees and could not do intellectually what my dad accomplished in his work. Education is a wonderful took but has no relationship to dementia or Alzheimer disease. If fact I have known persons with great intellects, proven scholars like my friend Gordon Zahn who, when they had dementia, had same problems as my dad. A friend’s wife now has Alzheimer and having been an educator all his life does not have simple everyday knowledge.
Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker had a dream of an agronomic universities where farmers, workers and professors could all come together to form a community. My dad would have fit right in with such a community as working intellectual.
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