Massaro: Lou Gehrig's disease sufferer steps up to plate to aid others

ARAPAHOE COUNTY - Brad Bennett didn't just get a bad news diagnosis 15 months ago. He got a death sentence.
He was initially relieved to hear he didn't have cancer.

"You don't understand," the doctor told him, he recalled.

"If you had cancer, you might have a chance."

Instead, he has Lou Gehrig's disease - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

There is no cure.

There is no treatment.

The outlook, in most cases: three to five years before the body shuts down forever.

"Doctors tell you to go home and get your affairs in order," Bennett said Thursday.

But he decided to do something about it, mainly for the roughly 8,000 new cases each year in the United States.

Bennett still goes to his office and works the phones, asking people and businesses for money and to update his facts and figures on the disease.

He and his wife, Suzanne, are co-chairs of A Gift of Time Bash/Augie's Quest on St. Patrick's Day at the Seawell Ballroom in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The benefit will raise funds for ALS research through the Muscular Dystrophy Association.


Bennett, 61, moved to Colorado from Illinois because of his love of the "ings" - skiing, fishing, hiking.

Now, he's benched, going through the progression - cane to walker to wheelchair - of ALS.

"At my checkup in December, it hadn't affected my voice or my swallowing or respiratory function," he said.

This isn't the first hard news Bennett has dealt with.

There was the loss of three daughters.

"When you're holding your daughter in your arms and she's dying of an incurable disease, it's the worst feeling in the world," he said.

"As bad as that was, there was a lady in the hospital whose four daughters died one after the other.

"If you want to talk about broken hearts, that's how you get them broken."

He said God blessed him with his youngest child, Ellen, now 15.

He said people are more apt to donate to a cause that is going to build something they can see. But they're not so generous donating to research.

"It's accepted that we're all going to die," he said.

"But we don't have to live with diseases."

Bennett came West with two degrees in business.

He worked for developers, putting together financing for projects, when he settled in Arapahoe County 30 years ago. He and Suzanne cleaned offices at night.

"It took me five years to save $10,000," he said.

"And then I started building one house at a time."

His sons, Brett and Jason, now run the companies he started.

He volunteered for nonprofits and supported them with money when he was working.

"I always felt I should be doing more for people," he said.

He has prayed to God for guidance and sees his illness as an answer - that he now has a cause he can fight for on behalf of others.

"I've been through two experimental protocols," he said.

"I don't think a cure will come in my lifetime, but I'm not just going to sit here and do nothing.

"It's about trying to make something better out of it, if not for you, for somebody else."


massarog@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5271

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