A run for Deb

In memory of his wife, Beverly resident Dave Olson is running the Boston Marathon to raise money for the Alzheimer's Association.

When Dave Olson lines up for the Boston Marathon on April 21, he knows he’s in for four-plus hours of struggle and pain.

But he only needs to look down at the two words pinned to his runner’s bib to remind him why it’s all worth it.

“For Deb.”

Deborah Olson died in January of 2024 at age 65 after a long struggle with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Dave is running Boston in his wife’s memory and to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association.

Deb and Dave Olson

But as he told me Wednesday, it’s also about raising awareness of Alzheimer’s, a cruel disease that touches so many people and yet can be so difficult to talk about.

“There’s still this kind of stigma about it,” he said. “If Deb had cancer, people would ask how she’s doing. That’s one of the worst things about this disease. It’s isolating for the person who has it, but it’s also isolating for the people around them, because people don’t want to talk about it.”

Olson, 58, who lives in Beverly, is my former boss. He was my editor at The Salem News, a burly guy who loves newspapers and always had your back when somebody didn’t like a story you wrote. He drinks whiskey, smokes cigars and goes for runs.

When I say ‘runs’, I mean like every day. As of Wednesday, he had run for 1,612 straight days — more than four years’ worth. He runs on the road, on trails, on the treadmill. By the time we met at 8 a.m., he had already run a couple of miles down to Hospital Point and back.

Olson has always been a runner, but running became particularly helpful once Deb was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, right around the time that Covid hit. She was only 61 at the time.

At first, there were slight memory lapses, like forgetting a name, which can happen to anybody. But when schools went to remote learning, Deb, who was a special education aide at the O’Maley Middle School in Gloucester, had trouble navigating the computer. She eventually went to a neurologist and got the diagnosis.

“It was devastating,” Olson said. “She was such a capable person. She learned Russian at age 30. She was a really smart, organized person. For her to start losing her independence was painful for me, and seeing how painful it was for her made it worse.”

Olson and Lucas, the couple’s only child, became Deb’s full-time caregivers. Dave helped her get dressed. He helped her bathe. Deb would have seizures and sometimes fall. They bought plastic glasses and plates so they wouldn’t break.

Deb could not be left alone, so either Dave or Lucas, who is now 30, were with her at all times. Because of Covid, they couldn’t get a home aide until towards the end. To get out of the house they would take her on outings — to Kelleher’s Pond to feed the ducks, to Captain Dusty’s for ice cream.

“Lucas was very loving. They were a completely involved caregiver,” Olson said. “I can’t imagine what that’s like to care for your mom like that when you’re 28, 29 years old.”

Thanks to the care of Dave and Lucas, Deb was able to remain at home until the final few months, when she moved to Blueberry Hill, a nursing home a short walk away from their home.

“I don’t regret it for a second,” Olson said of keeping Deb at home for as long as possible. “It was absolutely the right decision. She knew she was loved. She felt loved. She was comfortable.”

Last year Olson, who is the grants manager at The Open Door in Gloucester, raised more than $16,000 for the Alzheimer’s Association by running the Boston Marathon. He’s trying to top that this year. You can contribute here. Olson is also involved in organizing the annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Andover.

Olson said the Alzheimer’s Association not only raises money to help find a cure for the disease. It also supports caregivers.

“It’s such an emotionally and physically exhausting job and it can feel so isolating,” he said. “I was lucky. I had a great group of friends, I had the savings to take time off from work and be home. There are a lot of people who don’t have the advantages I had.”

Dave Olson in last year’s Boston Marathon.

As I said, Olson has always been a runner. In addition to his streak of daily runs, he’s run up Mount Washington 10 times. But running took on a different meaning while he was caring for Deb.

“It became a form of therapy,” he said. “It was a chance to be by myself. By keeping myself sane it made me a better caregiver.”

When Olson couldn’t run the Philadelphia Marathon in 2023 because of Deb’s illness, he did it on his treadmill at home. (Yes, 26.2 miles on a treadmill.) His friend and frequent running partner, Jessica Redis, ran on a treadmill next to him.

Olson and Deb met when she was working as a waitress in a restaurant near the University of New Hampshire. Olson had dropped out of college. After meeting Deb, he re-enrolled at UNH “to try to impress her.” They were married for 31 years.

Deb is never far from Dave’s mind. When he drives by his old house in Gloucester, he thinks how she’d be disappointed that the hedges aren’t trimmed just right. When he learned recently about the death of a friend’s son, the first thing he thought was, “I’ve got to tell Deb.”

And of course she’ll be on his mind when he’s running the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston. After all the time he spent caring for her, she’ll be the one helping him.

“That’s the thing that gets me through the tough miles,” Olson said. “Thinking about everything she went through. It’s incredible the strength she showed.”