Support a Walk for Alzheimers in honor of Jimmy Doohan


Mr. Doohan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and already has been suffering from Parkinson's. He made his last public appearance recently by being honored with a star on the hollywood walk of fame.

For those that don't know me, I have and always will be a fan of Star Trek. While some episodes or series may have a firmer grip in my heart than others, the original cast was something that lead me starry eyed through grade school and some of junior high until Star Trek: The Next Generation came on the air and gave me something to do for the next seven years.

Jimmy Doohan, aka 'Scotty' of the original Star Trek series, Star Trek 1 through 7 in the movies, and countless other television shows. While never a major role it was Scotty who always saved the bacon whenever something engineering related needed to be done.

Mr. Doohan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and already has been suffering from Parkinson's. He made his last public appearance recently by being honored with a star on the hollywood walk of fame.

When it first happened I noticed this in the news and all, but after listening to an episode of Your Mac Life and Wil Wheaton was a guest and was plugging his new book 'Just a Geek'. I remembered he had a blog that had quite the following that I read a while back when he was semi-regular on The Screen Savers (no link, the show that had that title is dead now and replaced by shit run by idiots at Comcast). He was quite the computer geek and still is one of my favorite actors out there. I really liked the Wesley character, maybe because I was close to his age and would have died to have been in his situation of acting on Star Trek.

One side note, I have a Oracle of Bacon type connection to Wil Wheaton. One of my friends growing up, Seth Wiley, directed a short film called 'Good Things' that won some awards with Wil playing a tollbooth collector in Cassody, KS. If I recall correctly they even worked together in Topeka, KS somewhere. When I found Seth years later I ragged on him hard for daring to work with someone remotely related to Star Trek and not getting me an autograph, but I digress.

Anyway Wil's latest entry points to a team forming called 'Stars Trekking for Jimmy Doohan' and have an official home page to collect donations. For some reason it locks up on me when I attempt to donate some money so I'm going to have to try it from a Windows machine at work or something. They are trying to raise a measly $5000 which shouldn't be too hard. If you happen to donate I think (guessing, can't get there yet) it lets you say something that scrolls on a list of donations if you'd like.

So what's $25? Give it a shot. Never know, we could all end up with no memories like Mr. Doohan, since no one knows what causes this disease yet.

Posted: Thu - September 23, 2004 at 09:11 PM           |

©