Family and Friends Support A CRA introduced two participants, living in the same town with the same last name. They were surprised by the similarities they discovered and have since become friends. In the hopes of motivating other SELECT participants to meet each other and find common interests, Jack Wilson gave us permission to share what he wrote in his diary after their first meeting. Jack Alexander Wilson Diary Entry... Today, on November 18, 2003 I met an extremely interesting 80 year old gentleman who has Guillain-Barre' syndrome and is confined to a wheelchair, but this has not affected his zest for life. I was introduced to Jack by Bruce Boughton of Anne Arundel Medical Center Prostate Study Clinic. You see both Jack and I are volunteers in this on-going study. Jack told me that the sense of being able to be part of a study that might someday help save lives was what brought him to the program and that he had been in the program since its inception at Georgetown University. At that point in his life he was still able to get around using the Metro. Now this program in the form of our mutual contact Bruce comes to visit him. There are several more things that Jack and I share in common. We both have the same last name, but as far as we know are not related to each other. His middle name of Alexander is the same as our son Alexander. We are both Unitarians, he by the fact that he converted from Baptist and me from being born and raised a Unitarian. He was in the U.S.Army Air Corps in World War II. The Army Air Corps later became the United States Air Force from which I received an honorable discharge. He spent many years as a Business Professor in Bangkok, Thailand and I spent about 5 months in Thailand in 1969. We spent a delightful afternoon at his house on Brooklyn Bridge Road in Laurel. He owns 8 ¾ acres of land and has a house that says comfortness is here. We shared all the things that we have in common with one other as well as many things that make us who we are. In his travels as a Business Professor Jack told me he has seen many different unique ports including Bangkok, China, Europe, and Africa. Jack talked fondly, but with a certain sadness to his voice about his experiences during the later stages of World War II and how he just missed going either to the South Pacific from Fort Ord in California and the European theaters from Fort Meade right here in Laurel. Both Fort Ord and Fort Meade where ports of debarkation and embarkation during the war. He talked a great deal about what he wanted done with his body after he dies and I was able to help him understand a little bit better about living wills. He wishes to have as much as possible of his body donated for organ retrieval and then wishes for the remainder of his body to be cremated so that his ashes can be buried with his wife's at Arlington. Oddly enough this is also my wish, as I am an organ donor who wants cremation and burial with my wife's ashes. He and his wife had been married about 48 years when she died of complications resulting from a fall and a stroke. This is another point we have in common, in that both of my parents died as a result of strokes. He and his wife used to raise Jack Russell Terriers and he currently has two of them living with him in his house, a male named Wink and a female whose name escapes me right now. Ironically one of the nicknames for our cat in Wink. We agreed to meet in the future, but did not set a date or a time.
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