YOUNG FUND-RAISER
SETS RECORDS
At 12, Eliza Nash has
brought in some
$30,000
for the ALS Association
By PAULA ALLEN
Photography JANET ROGERS
ELIZA NASH
Age: 12
Personal: Seventh-grader at Alamo
Heights Junior School; plays volleyball
and softball; no pets, “but I’d like a Shi
Tzu (dog) someday.”
Why she’s a Role Model: Eliza has
raised more than $30,000 for the ALS
Association. Because her father has the
disease, she hopes researchers will find a
cure, “so that other families won’t have
to live with it.”
Goals: Raising awareness of ALS; becoming
a family physician, “so that I can help
all kinds of people.”
Her own role model: Mother, Nancy
Nash, “because she has had to be both
parents to us sometimes,” and Oprah
Winfrey, “because she reaches out to so
many people” with her talk show and her
philanthropy.
Best advice ever given: “Never give
up,” printed on wristbands for the ALS
Association.
People would be surprised that … ”I
have something like this going on in my life.
I try not to show that anything’s wrong. I
don’t want people to treat me differently.”
Believes in … “Miracles.”
As the school year gets started,
seventh-grader Eliza Nash will
give herself a writing assignment.
It’s only a page long
and won’t be graded, but it’s a challenging
project with more than a grade at stake.
Every September for three years now,
Eliza has written a letter, asking family
and friends to help sponsor her in San
Antonio’s Walk to D’Feet ALS. For her,
participation in the walk isn’t about community
service hours or building a college
résumé. Like many leaders of walk
teams, she has a family member who has
the disease. The difference is, she’s
younger than most by decades, and has
raised more money than most — around
$30,000 to date — for the South Texas
chapter of the ALS Association, an organization
that fights the disease through
research, education and patient services.
Commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s
disease,” after the 1920s and ‘30s baseball
great who brought the illness to
national attention, ALS (amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis) typically strikes people in
their middle or later years. But Eliza’s
father, Dub Nash, was only 35 when he
was diagnosed with the incurable disease
that affects the nerves and muscles.
Though Eliza was then only 18
months old, she has been witness to the
grim progress of her father’s illness. She
can remember a time when Dub could
walk from his bedroom to the breakfast
room in their Alamo Heights home,
when his speech was clearer and when
he was less tired.
Eleven years into the disease, Dub,
who is 6 feet, 2 inches tall, weighs only
120 pounds. Recently, Eliza says proudly, “We found out I was strong enough to
lift him and his wheelchair into the car.”
Dub sits in the lightweight wheelchair,
provided by the ALS Association, to have
dinner with his family, one of the few
activities they can all still enjoy together.
He can’t eat much; ALS eventually robs
patients not only of voluntary muscle
movements but of essential functions
such as swallowing and breathing.
Sunlight is still streaming in the windows
of the Nashes’ living room when
Eliza’s brother, Will, age 16, helps Dub
leave the table and go to bed one late
summer evening. “He can still stand, but
he can’t walk anymore,” Eliza says softly
after her father’s door is closed. The
house is quiet when she and her mother,
Nancy, sit down to talk about Eliza’s
fund-raising for the annual walk, to be
held Oct. 27 in San Pedro Springs Park
She was 9 years old when her grandfather
asked her to join his team for the
San Antonio ALS walk, meaning that she
would attend the walk, taking at least
one lap around the course. (There is no
registration fee for the walk, but team
members may contribute or help raise
funds toward the team’s sponsorship.) “I
thought about it, and then I decided I
wanted to have my own team,” says
Eliza, who speaks with a precision and
poise beyond her years.
It was late in the day before the walk
when Eliza and her brother set out to ask
neighbors they knew if they’d like to help.
When they stopped at the home of Bonnie
Kelley, she not only made a donation but
got on the phone and called others. “We
had only about two hours before it got
dark,” Eliza remembers, “so (Mrs. Kelley)
wanted to help us collect as much money
as we could in the time we had left before
we had to go home.” That turned out to
be more than $800. “It was an amazing
amount of money in such a short time,”
says Eliza. It gave her the idea to try again
the next year, using another approach to
reach even more people.
In September 2005, Eliza and her
father sat down to write a letter, explaining
what the ALS Association is, letting
recipients know about the Walk to
D’Feet ALS and asking if they would like
to join her at the walk or to help sponsor
her team. That year, Eliza and Dub made
a list of about 110 people they knew
who might be able to attend or donate;
they mailed the letter with enclosed selfaddressed,
stamped envelopes and
hoped for the best.
Before the date of the late-October
event, most of those envelopes had come
back to them — with a total of about
$13,000 inside. It became their goal to
think of an additional 50 people each year;
with that increase, Eliza’s team last year
raised around $15,000. A friendly competition
exists among Walk team leaders that
helps spur fund-raising efforts. “Last year,
a man from Laredo barely beat (Eliza),”
says her mother, “and he had 200 people
on his team to her 30 or 40.”
Mailing the letters and managing the
checks is a chore, but it’s something that
father and daughter can do together.
Dub has always attended accessible
events, such as Eliza’s softball and Will’s
baseball games, but there are many
events in the life of his children that are
logistically impossible for him. “If it’s too
hard to get in, he can’t go,” Eliza says,
lowering her voice. “My French horn
recitals, a father-daughter dance ... I feel
sad because there are things my dad
can’t do with me.”
As Dub enters the later stages of ALS,
he is often exhausted and in some pain.
That’s unusual, says Nancy, but it may be
because he has survived much longer than
most people who have the disease. The
average life expectancy of patients with
ALS is about three to five years after diagnosis;
Dub is in the 10 percent of people
who live longer. He has been known to
have the disease since 1996, when from all
appearances, he was a strong, healthy
young man. The disease is hard to detect
in the early stages, with vague symptoms
such as stiffness and muscle weakness.
At that time, Dub worked for a realestate
developer located off Loop 1604. “He kept going to work for two-and-ahalf
years,” says Nancy. “He stopped
only when he couldn’t pull the key out of
the ignition any more, and I found he
was steering the car with his knees.”
After that, Dub stayed home. “I think
he may have become a more involved
father than he would have been (without
ALS),” says Nancy. Eliza hasn’t seen the
1942 movie, Pride of the Yankees, in
which Gary Cooper plays Gehrig, the
famed first baseman who developed ALS
in the late 1930s, but she has heard a
recording of Gehrig’s famous farewell
speech, in which he says he considers
himself “the luckiest man on the face of
the earth,” for having a loving family,
supportive fans and the chance to have
played professional baseball. Asked if
there is any upside to Dub’s illness, she
says, “Yes, because he is one of the few
people with ALS who live as long as he
has. And he’s been home with us more
than most fathers.”
Eliza has always known that her
father’s condition was serious. “As I got
older, I got more information,” she says.
She is facing the fact that Dub’s death
may not be far in the future, with help
from a counselor at the Children’s
Bereavement Center, where she was the
first child to come for help dealing with
anticipatory grief. At the center, which
aids children and teenagers in surviving
the loss of someone significant in their
lives, Eliza and her peers can let their
feelings show. “I can say anything there
and I won’t be judged,” she says. Her
friends from school know about her
fund-raising for ALS, “and they think it’s
cool,” but they can’t know exactly what
she’s going through at home. “I try not
to make people feel bad for me, but this
has been going on for so long,” she says. “I just want to be normal, but this (situation)
is so not normal.”
Though Eliza seems unusually serious
and mature, she also enjoys the same
things other children do. “I like going to
my friends’ houses, I like scootering with
my neighbors,” she says. She went to
Camp Longhorn this past summer, is starting
to play volleyball and is an A and B student
at school, where her favorite subjects
are math (“because I love the challenge”)
and English (“because I love to write stories
and poems to express my feelings”).
She hopes to continue working to
increase awareness of ALS even after her
father’s death. The disease is relatively rare,
affecting only about 30,000 people in the
United States at any given time. “Most
people don’t know about it,” says Eliza.
Though she is naturally reserved, even shy,
she has enjoyed some chances to be a
spokesperson. Last summer, Eliza was
nominated by her fifth-grade teacher,
Janet Briggs, to be Radio Disney ’s “Kid of
the Month.” When she won the honor for
her outstanding fund-raising achievement,
a phone interview she did from camp was
aired nationally on Radio Disney stations
every day for months.
Next, Eliza hopes to be the face as
well as the voice for families whose loved
ones have ALS. Her aunt Laurie Harris,
who lives in Hawaii, has launched “Operation Oprah,” an e-mail campaign
to get talk-show host Oprah Winfrey to
do a show on ALS, featuring Eliza, by
writing to the producers at the “Send us
your show suggestions” page on
Winfrey’s Web site, http://www.oprah.com/email/reach/email_showideas.jhtml.
Even when Eliza’s own father is no longer suffering from ALS, she says, “I
want to help find a cure so that no one
else will ever have to go through what
we have.” Her personal goals are to
attend Princeton University — which she
learned about while doing a third-grade
report on the state of New Jersey , where
the Ivy League institution is located – and
to become a family physician. “At first, I
wanted to be a pediatrician,” she says. “But I changed my mind, so I could help
all people.”
To contribute to Walk to D’Feet ALS
San Antonio, visit http://web.alsa.org
/site/TR or hand-deliver or mail a check
(payable to the ALS Association) to Julia
Dyer, Administrative Assistant, ALS
Association, South Texas Chapter; 8600
Wurzbach, Suite 700; San Antonio TX
78240. For credit to Eliza Nash’s team,
indicate that the donation is for Eliza’s
Champs. For questions about the Walk
donation process, call Julia Dyer at
(210) 733-5204.
