Vivian Trickey Smith didn’t know about Alzheimer’s Arkansas when her mother was diagnosed with the disease in 2008. Her mission now, as chairman of the organization’s Champions Gala, is to make sure other caregivers know the organization is there when they need it.
“If I’ve helped one person to know they are not alone in their battle, then I’ve done my job,” she says.
The sixth annual Alzheimer’s Arkansas Champions Gala, set for Saturday, will begin with a VIP reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by a dinner and live auction at 7 at the Little Rock Marriott Hotel. Tickets are $50 for the reception and $100 for the dinner.
The event will honor Rick Fleetwood, who cared for his mother after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; Priscilla Pittman, retired program director of Alzheimer’s Arkansas; and Jennifer Batesel, a volunteer.
“Alzheimer’s Arkansas’ sole vision and mission is to meet the needs of the caregivers of loved ones with Alzheimer’s and dementia so they are able to take better care of themselves, which in turn results in better care of their loved one,” Smith says.
Smith’s mother, Virginia Rogers, was in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s by the time she was diagnosed. She died in 2013.
“The clues were there, but we just didn’t know,” she says.
Smith knows now that accumulating sour cream containers, several with blue mold and most with just a dab of sour cream in the bottom, and half-empty cups of coffee topped with layers of scum that she found in her mother’s previously pristine refrigerator — and her protests about not being able to get more if those were thrown out — could be attributed to the disease. So, too, is the fact that her mother couldn’t keep her medication schedule straight and she no longer relished a shower.
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Smith has since learned that an illness or trauma can accelerate the progression of Alzheimer’s. Looking back, she realizes that her mother never fully recovered after her father, V.W. Rogers, died in 1993. The death of Smith’s husband, Don Trickey in 2004, also hit her hard.
“She never was the same after my dad died. They were married for 55 years,” Smith says. “And I think Don’s death really triggered something. He was like a son to her.”
Smith got involved with Alzheimer’s Arkansas three years ago after being recruited by Elise Siegler, executive director of the organization. Siegler previously worked for Baptist Health Foundation.
“I met Vivian when her husband was sick, when he was in the last weeks of his life, at Baptist Health Springhill,” Siegler says. “Later, she wanted to do something special in memory of him.”
BUILDING A PEACEFUL SPACE
Smith had a sundial put in at Baptist and shortly after that, a water feature.
“The reason I built the waterfall is that I wanted people to be able to have peace. Whatever you’re dealing with here, to be able to walk out there and have it soak in and come over you,” she says. “Don loved the water, I love the water. We lived on Lake Conway the last few years of his life and we would just sit out there and look at the water and count our blessings.”
Siegler invited her to help with the Baptist foundation’s fundraiser, Bolo Bash.
“She had never been part of a fundraising effort before she helped us at Baptist Health. She learned she was pretty darn good at fundraising,” Siegler says.
After that, Smith got involved with Runway for a Cause, supporting the Arkansas chapter of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and with Arkansas Hospice Foundation.
“The day I was supposed to have an orientation for Arkansas Hospice I was signing my mother up to be a patient,” Smith says.
Then Siegler, now executive director of Alzheimer’s Arkansas, sought her out.
“When I moved from Baptist Health over here, I snatched her. We told her about what we were doing and she jumped in with both feet and both hands. She’s been the chairperson for the gala for two years and she’s grown it significantly.”
Smith’s committee raised $220,000 last year and she hopes to surpass that this year. By February, $179,000 had already been raised.
“If I’ve helped one person to know they are not alone in their battle, then I’ve done my job.”
“It’s been stepped up every year,” Smith says of the event. “It started as a buffet at Temple B’Nai Israel and it’s gotten bigger and bigger. All of our programs are free of charge. However, it takes funds to support these programs and our mission.”
Alzheimer’s Arkansas provides support groups, education sessions, financial assistance and a 24-hour help line for caregivers. The organization also offers grants for various needs, like respite care and building wheelchair ramps.
Smith’s mother lived in North Little Rock’s Park Hill for 64 years. Smith, who lives in Conway, didn’t see her every day. They were seeing a doctor for an unrelated problem when Smith noticed something was wrong. Her mother was disoriented, unwilling to let the doctor examine her for the problem that took her there.
“In the confusion, I asked him about Alzheimer’s,” Smith says. “He put her on Aricept and she improved greatly but after a few weeks she decided she didn’t want to take it anymore because she didn’t think there was anything wrong with her.”
She had her mother evaluated at the St. Vincent Longevity Center.
“They test each part of the brain starting with the front. The front part of your brain is comprehension and she didn’t get one question they asked her in that test correct — and that’s what’s going on in the world around you. She didn’t know what year it was, she didn’t know where she was. I was shocked,” Smith says. “It’s devastating because here’s your mother who’s so bright … I mean, your mom is the one who teaches you to tie your shoes.”
PLAYING DOMINOES
Rogers moved into an assisted living home — Fox Ridge in North Little Rock — almost immediately.
“It wasn’t safe for her to be by herself. I put her in North Little Rock so her friends could still come play dominoes with her and eat lunch with her,” Smith says.
Rogers was still playing dominoes three weeks before she died, long after she had ceased to recognize her daughter.
Selling Rogers’ home in Park Hill was wrought with emotion for Smith, the youngest of four. Her mom was the root of many precious memories there.
“She was always the mom on our block — there were 24 kids in our neighborhood,” Smith says. “She was always the one who was the PTA president, the one who pulled the sled. We had a great childhood.”
From that home she walked to Park Hill Elementary and later to Ridge Road Junior High, where she met Don Trickey, who was a year older.
“We just became really good friends and then in high school we started dating,” she says.
Trickey served in Vietnam after graduating and when he returned, Smith dropped out of then-Little Rock University (now UALR) and married him. She was 17. They have two children — Michelle Rector and Bart Trickey, both of Conway — as well as seven grandchildren.
THE QUACK SHACK
“We had no idea he was sick,” she says of her husband. “None.”
Trickey’s doctor ordered a CAT scan to find the source of lingering abdominal pain after a routine colonoscopy he had six weeks earlier, but they still thought things were fine.
“We had just bought some duck hunting property — the ‘Quack Shack’ — and we went down there on Thursday and my son and his two little boys were going to come down on Friday and they were going to duck hunt all weekend,” Smith says.
The CAT scan revealed a mass on Trickey’s pancreas and a biopsy the next day confirmed that he had pancreatic cancer. Smith was the one who gave him the news.
“He looked at me and he said, ‘I’m going to need a yellow pad and a pencil,’” she says. “He was just business all the way.”
On that pad, he wrote a list: update wills, call the insurance company about a cancer policy, make funeral arrangements and call an accountant. Trickey owned businesses in Little Rock and Texarkana —18-wheeler freight trailer sales, refrigeration and leasing and rental — and he had 50 employees. He wanted to take care of those people and to make sure his wife had enough money to live on.
“On Thursday we went and looked at cemeteries. Now, the week before we were duck hunting and here we were looking at cemeteries. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life,” she says. “I was 54 and he was 56 and he was the love of my life.”
Trickey died 11 weeks after his diagnosis.
Chuck Hicks, their friend since Ridge Road, was by her side.
“He sat me down and he said, ‘You are not going to drown on my time,’ and walked me through losing Don,” she says.
THE DATING GAME
Hicks got her involved in the Wildcats Foundation.
“Another old schoolmate of ours was the athletic director at the time and a few of us got together. We knew there weren’t enough funds to support certain things so we put a group together and started the Wildcat Foundation,” Hicks says. “It was a great outreach and it was a good way to get Vivian re-engaged in the high school group and to help refocus her energies on helping others, and that’s her calling to begin with.”
Hicks shepherded Smith through the dating process, when she was ready, and served as an honor attendant when she married Alan Smith in 2009.
She and Alan, a retired dentist, were set up by friends. They talked on the phone for four days before she agreed to meet him at a pizza place. Later, phone calls happened as he drove from Conway to Iowa for duck hunting.
“We would talk until I had to pull over and refuel or get something to eat and we would crank it back up when I got back on the highway,” he says. “That was my first lesson in listening to Vivian and what she has to say — and she has a lot to say.”
He was impressed.
“I thought she was the most clear-eyed, clearheaded person I had ever met, and that was a fact. She knew exactly where she was, what she wanted to do, how she wanted to accomplish it and if you’ve ever been involved with Vivian about anything she’s not stubbornly resistant, she’s just absolutely driven to get something done and she knows how to get it done,” he says.
She was in the thick of caring for her mother when they started dating, and he understood. Both of his parents had Alzheimer’s.
“He would tell me, when she said something that hurt me, ‘It looks like your mother but that’s not your mother, that’s the disease talking,’” she says.
They had a Cajun wedding reception at the Old Gin in Conway.
“It was just kick-back fun, DJ, dance, celebration and then the next day we got married again at Fox Ridge. We had another ceremony for my mom because she just wouldn’t have understood what was happening at the wedding but I wanted her to be there with me for that,” Smith says.
Smith’s friend Theresa Allred of Conway has been there through many of her life’s transitions. They raised their children together.
“Vivian was always looking for ways to help people and she never wants people to be sad. I guess that’s why our husbands always called us Lucy and Ethel because we were always wanting to make people laugh and help people see things with humor. If you don’t see humor in your situation, you’re in trouble,” Allred says.
Allred moved with her husband to a house next door to Vivian and Don on Lake Conway years ago.
“We kept coming over fishing and visiting so we bought the place that they had originally and they bought a place with more land,” she says. “We actually retired on the lake because of them. That’s how much fun we always had together.”
Allred had a mastectomy around the time of Trickey’s diagnosis. Smith was by her side, she says.
“She was my main cheerleader with my surgery and my treatments,” Allred says.
Allred was the inspiration for the weekly “Caring Hearts” cancer support group Smith hosts in her home.
“We don’t have a program, we don’t have officers, we don’t take up money, it’s just a group of people that get together and support each other,” Smith says. “We don’t talk about cancer, but if you’re taking a medicine and you want to know if anyone has taken this or how did you react or what did you do to help your symptoms, it’s just nice for people to know you’re not in something alone.”
Smith made a vow as she grieved for her husband and her mother.
“I said, ‘I’m going to seek joy and I’m going to do that as a compliment to Don and the life we had together. To do anything else would be an insult to him,” she says. “I could be bitter and hard but I don’t think God intends you to be that. I think he intends for you to take it and move forward.”
SELF PORTRAIT
Vivian Trickey Smith
DATE, PLACE OF BIRTH: Nov. 25, 1949, Little Rock (but she lived in North Little Rock)
SOMETHING I SAY OFTEN IS: Be kind.
MY KIDS WOULD SAY I’M: Giving. They would say I’m a humanitarian.
I ALWAYS HAVE WITH ME: Memories.
THE LAST BOOK I READ AND LIKED WAS: Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven.
A MOVIE I SAW RECENTLY AND LOVED WAS: The Greatest Showman . We’ve seen it three times.
I’M MOST PROUD OF: My children.
MY FAVORITE MEAL: Crawfish, ounce for ounce.
THE MOST PRODUCTIVE TIME OF DAY FOR ME IS: Afternoons. That’s when I get the most done.
MY MOST PRECIOUS CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS OF: Playing with kids in my neighborhood, Park Hill. I loved my neighborhood and I made longtime friendships.
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Blessed
“I could be bitter and hard but I don’t think God intends you to be that. I think he intends for you to take it and move forward.”
