CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. — Although the Finger Lakes Walk to End Alzheimer’s is a great way to get your steps in, for community members like Matthew Mann, who lost his father to the disease in 2018, the walk also serves as a way to honor loved ones and hope for the future.

“Throughout the disease we saw him lose his ability to speak, lose his ability to express himself,” Mann said. “It was just a devastating thing to know that we were going to be facing something where we were going to lose him a little bit at a time.”

Mann and his family have participated in the walk for more than a decade and continue to participate as a way to remember his father, but also to help spread awareness and fight for a cure.

“It’s the research that’s going to give us the treatments, hopefully one day a cure,” said Mann.

Especially with the recent announcement that the Lecanemab phase 3 study showed promise in lowering cognitive decline for those in the early stages of the disease.

“We feel like today’s walk is a great way to celebrate that breakthrough…and we are so excited about the fact that there’s a treatment that’s actually slowing the course of the disease for people with mild cognitive impairment,” said Teresa Galbier, executive director of Alzheimer’s Association Rochester Finger Lakes.

Participants hold Promise Garden Flowers in different colors to signify whether someone has died from or is living with the disease – or is simply participating in the event — and this year, one flower stands out.

“That white flower symbolizes a cure,” Galbier said. “My dream, my vision is in a very near term, we’re going to have this place filled with white flowers because we had so many people who became that survivor.”

Giving this year’s walk a greater meaning of hope.

“People do not understand this disease until you walk the journey and they need to know that there’s hope,” said Ruth Mann, Matthew’s mother. “There’s always hope. We never need to lose hope.”

“What I learned was I had to embrace each moment with him. I had to embrace just those times we had no matter what his reality was, just had to be with him that day,” Matthew Mann said. “And I think for those that are going through this with someone they love that is the message I would give to them.”