As one who watched my Mom fight this disease for over 20 years it hits home. The activity importance can’t be overstated. I remember my mom walking 3-6 miles a day no matter the season for this reason. Horrible disease
# ‘He’s just relentless’: Decade into Parkinson’s fight, Kirk Gibson keeps on swinging
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Not that he’s finished, of course. Far from it, in his mind ― a mind that remains sharp as the razor Gibson rarely uses anymore, now that he’s off Tigers TV broadcasts. It’s now been more than 10 years since Gibson, 68, was officially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and nearly twice that since he first started exhibiting (and ignoring) symptoms. He moves slower these days ― there’s the Parkinson’s, but also a bad knee, a bad foot, a bad Achilles, we might’ve missed something ― but he moves a lot, and that’s the key he says, to combatting a neurological disease that relentlessly attacks the muscles and the brain, causing tremors, stiffness, balance issues and memory lapses, and still has no cure.
“Everything I do every day is like a marker, it’s a measuring stick,” says Gibson, wearing a gray 1984 Tigers polo and a black belt with silver Michigan State medallions, a not-so-subtle reminder of the glory days ― though he spends far more time talking about the future than the past these days. (With one significant exception: “Bleep yes,” he says, when asked if he wonders how he got Parkinson’s; he’s settled more on possible lead exposure as a kid growing up in Waterford Township than the hits he took in football and baseball.)
“I’m not as good,” adds Gibson, officially a 20.8 handicap, "but I still love to do it — compete.
“I’ve gotta move.”
And move, he does.
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The center will be activity-focused. Movement matters, Gibson likes to say.
And there’s no better poster boy for the mission than Gibson, whether it’s golf, ping-pong, pool, bowling, hunting, fishing, cribbage, bridge, you name it.
“I bet you know that by now,” Cam Gibson, Kirk’s son who works for the Parkinson’s foundation, says with a laugh. "That’s just really how he’s always been. He’s always been tenacious. He’s always been on the offense more than the defense. He was active before he was diagnosed. He was working out. He was bowling. He was golfing. He was in the outdoors. The disease can throw some curveballs at you that can just kind of make those activities harder. He doesn’t let those things being harder affect him. He’s going to keep doing them. We went up to Montana recently, in the dead of (bleeping) winter and it’s negative-40 degrees, we’re sitting in the middle of a snowstorm, a blizzard. We’re hunting ducks and geese, and you’re going through this (bleep) terrain, up mountains, down hills.
"It’s changed him in certain ways, but it hasn’t changed the guy. He’s still got that I-don’t-give-a-(bleep)-how-hard-it-is (attitude), I’m still doing it. It’s the only way he knows. And I respect the hell out of it.
“There’s a lot of people that would fold. That’s never how he’s going to be.”
And Gibson, a natural leader, wants others to follow his lead.
That was the idea behind the center. When Gibson first was diagnosed with Parkinson’s ― he froze up on live TV on a Tigers postgame show, and knew he had to see the doctor ― he immediately began thinking of ways his plight could help others. He quickly got in touch with actor Michael J. Fox and the people behind his foundation. (Fox is arguably the most well-known face of Parkinson’s, which also has afflicted the likes of boxing great Muhammad Ali and Dave Parker, who died last month at 75 and will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this month.) Fox and his people were helpful to Gibson, and they also provided a good road map. Fox’s foundation has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for research, with a cure the end goal. Gibson’s foundation wasn’t going to be able to match that.
So Gibson started thinking of other ways to make a difference with the resources he already had, and the money he planned to raise. That’s where the idea of the center came from.
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“Parkinson’s can be very depressing for people. Very. To be out with people is important,” says Gibson, noting many Parkinson’s patients’ first inclination is to try and hide the disease ― but it wasn’t his. “I knew I was going to come out immediately. You could feel people saying, ‘What’s wrong with Gibby?’ … It was a relief (after the diagnosis), and then it’s time to go to work, time to come up with a game plan. What’s the plan?”
Gibson immediately thought of a time back in his playing days, when he hit a walk-off home run. But before the clubhouse opened to the media, his beloved manager, Sparky Anderson, pulled him aside and told him, “Louis needs some loving.” Second baseman Lou Whitaker had made a nice but overlooked defensive play that set up Gibson for the heroics, and Anderson wanted to remind Gibson of that before he met with the press. When reporters gathered around him, Gibson told them, “Guys, you are at the wrong locker.”
“Sparky was right, but I wasn’t thinking that way,” Gibson said. "I was thinking, ‘I hit the (bleeping) home run.’ (Sparky) taught me to be selfless. That’s one of our words in the foundation: selflessness.
“I was going on a journey,” Gibson continued. “I knew it would be better with more people.”