Editor, Commonwealth:
Regarding the article on the Parkinson’s support group (“Fighting back: Greenwood Parkinson’s support group re-established,” Jan. 19), I would like to add some additional comments.
It was Fred Carl, my former employer at Viking Range, who recognized my symptoms before my diagnosis and connected me with the neurologist who had treated his father. And it was Fred’s mother who started the original Parkinson’s support group in Greenwood. I’ll always owe Mrs. Carl and Fred a debt of gratitude for their concern and invaluable direction.
Another debt is owed to Rob Weingartner, the visiting pastor from Nashville who encouraged me to check out Rock Steady Boxing and even found the location in nearby Grenada for me to attend. More than unusual coincidences to me.
Writing this serves to remind me once again of how many great and good things come about in our lives when people help someone else — not out of pity, not out of a self-serving sense of being superior, but out of genuine caring for another person.
That is the blessing from God that I see in this disease, and it is why I am so deeply motivated to do whatever I can to help others, as I have been helped.
Richard Beattie
Greenwood
