Melissa Longing

Conway woman organizes Faulkner County Alzheimer’s Walk

Melissa Longing wears this year’s T-shirt for the ninth annual Faulkner County Alzheimer’s Walk for Alzheimer’s Arkansas, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Early registration for the Conway event is Monday, and participants can also register at 8 a.m. Saturday, the day of the walk. Longing’s father and mother-in-law died of Alzheimer’s disease, and Longing said the walk is one way she can make a difference.
Melissa Longing wears this year’s T-shirt for the ninth annual Faulkner County Alzheimer’s Walk for Alzheimer’s Arkansas, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Early registration for the Conway event is Monday, and participants can also register at 8 a.m. Saturday, the day of the walk. Longing’s father and mother-in-law died of Alzheimer’s disease, and Longing said the walk is one way she can make a difference.

Melissa Longing of Conway was a daddy’s girl all her life.

Even at the end, when Alzheimer’s disease took his ability to say her name, “his eyes lit up when I came in the room,” she said.

Longing, 55, said the diagnosis and death of her father, James A. Montgomery, from Alzheimer’s disease, as well as that of her mother-in-law, Louise Longing, forever changed her life.

Melissa Longing is getting ready for the Sept. 13 Faulkner County Alzheimer’s Walk, which she started in 2006. This year it will be held at Buzz Bolding Arena at Conway High School.

Longing grew up in Conway, and her mother, Shirley, and her father owned Razorback Towel Service, a commercial rugs-and-linen-rental service.

“I was a baton twirler, and I took dance lessons, and I’ve always been a football fan — always. My parents loved football,” Longing said.

By football, she means the Razorbacks, although Longing said she was a Minnesota Vikings fan for years. She said she “acquired” the Dallas Cowboys when Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin and Troy Aikman came on the scene.

“I don’t have a bucket list, but if I did, I’d want to meet Emmitt Smith,” she said.

Longing traded a baton for pompoms at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, becoming a cheerleader her freshman year.

She was a history major, she said, “because I love history.” She wasn’t sure how she’d use her major, except possibly to teach.

Her sister, Jayme Claassen, is a teacher in the Mayflower School District.

“I didn’t know for sure. Back then, I think we were more interested in getting married than a career,” Longing said.

Longing said she met her husband, Danny, also a Conway High School grad, at Sonic. He was sitting in a vehicle across from her at the drive-in restaurant.

They married in April 1980. He and his father, J.R. Longing, had started The Carpet Center a few months earlier.

Longing was working as a manager at a clothing store in town, but prior to that, she had worked for Gary and Nancy Strain’s photography business.

“He (Gary) was taking pictures at Irby Dance recital, and I was there, and I just started helping them pose the kids for the pictures,” Longing said. She had taken dance from age 5 through college, she said, and even taught a few classes for Irby Dance Studio’s owner, Rochelle Irby.

Gary Strain asked if she wanted to help with the photography at another Irby Dance Studio recital in Searcy. She ended up working for the photography business for several years.

“I learned more about work ethic from Gary and Nancy Strain,” she said. “They taught me by example what it was like to own your own business. How wonderful was that?

“Whatever it takes, you do it. If you tell somebody you’ll have their pictures Friday, and if you have to stay up till 2 a.m. on Friday to make sure it happens, you do it. And we did,” she said, laughing.

Longing said she baby-sat the Strains’ now-adult daughter, Brandy Strain-Dayer.

“They’re like family,” Longing said.

Nancy Strain recalled it the same way.

“She worked for us from the time she was in high school until she finished college and got married,” Strain said.

“She was just like one of our kids. We loved her dearly, and my business was just getting started, and she saw it from the ground up. We worked late hours, and she did, too,” Strain said. “She’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.”

At that time, Longing said, she didn’t know she would run a business.

After Longing’s father-in-law became ill, she quit as manager of the clothing store and in 1984 started working in The Carpet Center with her husband.

Their firstborn, son Monty, 31, was 15 months old at the time.

“I’d take care of him and sell carpet,” she said.

Longing’s father was 59 when he was diagnosed with the memory-robbing Alzheimer’s disease.

“It changed my life tremendously. I went through some really dark times,” she said.

Knowing she was losing someone so important in her life was devastating.

“Nobody can prepare you for that. … Nobody can prepare you to be a parent to a parent, or deal with their death,” she said. “I was real close to my dad.”

She said her mother had suspected for a while that he was developing dementia, based on some questionable business decisions and personality changes.

“Alzheimer’s patients will become very clingy to the caregiver, and he had really never been that way,” Longing said.

“My dad was real easygoing, and he got agitated and frustrated very quickly.”

The final straw was when her father had two car accidents, which were his fault, she said.

“All I knew is they forget things. There’s so much more than that,” Longing said of Alzheimer’s patients.

He died 11 years ago on Sept. 20 at age 67. Her mother-in-law was diagnosed on the third anniversary of her father’s death and died in June 2009.

When her father died, Longing said, she suggested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made for Alzheimer’s research.

The Roller-McNutt Funeral Home staff listed Alzheimer’s Arkansas and an address in Montgomery’s obituary.

“That’s how I heard about them,” Longing said.

Longing and her mother participated in the Alzheimer’s Arkansas Walk in Little Rock for two years.

“I said, ‘Conway is big enough to have our own walk. I want to do it,’” Longing said.

The first few years, the walk was held at Toad Suck Park in Perry County.

More than 700 people participated last year. The “walk” is just a ceremonial couple of laps, she said.

The Faulkner County walk has teams who raise money, although it’s not required, and vendors participate from various organizations and businesses.

Last year, $24,000 was raised.

“Our goal this year is to raise over $30,000,” she said.

“When we raise money for Alzheimer’s Arkansas, we are giving to the caregivers,” Longing said. “When we raise money, 88 percent goes back to programs and services.” The organization also helps families monetarily and provides symposiums.

One of the services is a 24-hour telephone line, which Longing said could have been useful when her father was having some of his problems, had they known about it.

“Daddy thought 18-wheelers were driving through his bedroom at night,” she said. A call could have given her mother advice on how to handle it, Longing said.

Early registration for the Faulkner County Alzheimer’s Walk will be from 2-7 p.m. Monday in the conference room at The Carpet Center. T-shirts are available for a $25 donation. Early registration gets a participant two door-prize tickets instead of one the day of the event.

Longing and her husband sold The Carpet Center to their son, nephew and their business partner about four years ago, and the couple now run Longing Properties.

“We have 180 doors of rental properties,” she said.

It keeps her busy.

“I love it — it’s a full-time job. People say, ‘How’s retirement?’ I work six days a week instead of five,” she said, laughing.

Longing said she showed an apartment one night

last week, just before she went to First United Methodist Church to talk to an Alzheimer’s-disease support group about the upcoming walk.

“I had a really touching moment last night,” she said the day after the event. “One of the little ladies there, her husband clearly has Alzheimer’s. She said the granddaughters walked with him around the track last year, and it was such a touching moment for them.”

Longing said she fought back tears.

“That’s the kind of memories we’re trying to make because time is limited,” she said.

Longing said she is quickly approaching the age her father was when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She will turn 57 on Oct. 2.

She said it’s OK to forget your keys; it’s when you don’t know what your keys are for that signals a problem.

Longing said she looks forward to the day researchers find the cause of and a cure for Alzheimer’s. In the meantime, she’ll keep doing her part.

The Sept. 13 event will begin with registration at 8 a.m., followed by the walk at 8:45. It’s a day Longing looks forward to all year.

“The older we get, I think the more we realize, if you haven’t done something for other people before you leave, you just leave,” she said.

“This is a legacy that can be carried on — if not by my kids, by someone.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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