02/14/2026
Do you have a love story to share? My mom with a prompt or two loved to share her and my dad's love story. She would on occasion break out in song, their song "Your my Everthing" by Joni James. According to the nurse who was with her when she passed, that song was playing.
A Valentine’s Day story that reminds us that love doesn’t end with Alzheimer’s — it evolves, endures and inspires action.❤️
The story of Sally Oelschlager Vulich and Skip Orlady began in a Minneapolis suburb, where they were high school sweethearts who went to prom together. Life took them in different directions — college, careers, marriages, children — but decades later, a shared tragedy brought them back together. Both had lost their spouses to younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
Their reconnection started with an email. While in Arizona escaping a Minnesota polar vortex in 2021, Skip remembered it was Sally’s birthday and looked her up online. He discovered that her husband, Tom, had died of Alzheimer’s. Skip had lost his wife, Liz, to the disease a few years earlier. That email quickly led to nightly phone calls, just like they had done as teenagers — only now, they were several states apart, catching up on 30 years of life, love and loss.
“The shared losses, challenges, struggles, and suffering is an enormous part of our current connection,” Sally said. “And what we found in each other was a comfortable place to openly talk and relish in what Liz and Tom brought to this world and the lives they touched.”
Years before, Sally found herself managing two parallel challenges: caring for her husband, as well as losing her mother, who was also declining from Alzheimer’s disease. Living in Reno, Nevada, she struggled for years to get a diagnosis for Tom.
Tom was diagnosed in 2017 and died in 2019 at age 59. Skip’s wife Liz, a pediatrician, was diagnosed earlier thanks to access to resources like the Mayo Clinic. She died at age 56 in 2012. Skip has also lost his father-in-law to Alzheimer’s. The disease has touched multiple generations of both of their families.
Their shared experience of caregiving, grief and resilience led them to the Alzheimer’s Association and its advocacy affiliate, the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement (AIM), where they joined a nationwide community of advocates working to help increase federal funding of Alzheimer’s research and advance legislation that supports those living with Alzheimer’s and the families who stand by them every day.
“With Skip alongside me, and my new support group [of fellow advocates] who totally get it, there’s no need for lengthy explanations to get those affirming nods of acknowledgment and
understanding,” said Sally. “After the death of my husband, I felt hopeless. Spending time as an advocate has brought back hope. The hope I had lost was finally found.”
Skip and Sally’s bond is built on decades of friendship, love, and a shared mission. They know the devastation Alzheimer’s can bring — and they’re determined to make a difference.
You can make a difference too. Join Skip and Sally in making sure Alzheimer’s remains a national priority: alz.org/advocacy.
