Annie Lindsay can still remember that evening she spoke with her dad on the phone.
Since he lived in the mountains of Colorado and she in Las Vegas, the two shared a phone call almost every night. It was routine.
But this night felt different.
“He asked how my car was doing, and I told him that I was thinking about trading it in for a new one,” she recalled. “The very next night he asked me the same question. Then it happened again a different night that week. I called my mom to tell her about it, and she told me that some of my siblings had a similar experience with him.”
They didn’t know it at the time, but Nathan Lindsay was in the early stages of a long and brutal battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
He had spent a majority of his life in the U.S. Air Force, eventually retiring with the coveted rank of Major General.
Shirley Lindsay said her husband, affectionately referred to as "Nate," never forgot a thing in his life. As a general in the Air Force, his mind was a steel trap.
“One day, I heard from one of Nate’s co-workers that he had lost a credit card before going on to lose something else,” she said. “That’s when we began to learn that something was wrong.”
The Lindsays experience is, unfortunately, all too common.
According to Dr. Jeffrey Cummings, research professor in the Department of Brain Health and director of the Chambers-Grundy Center for Transformative Neuroscience in UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences, roughly 6.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s dementia.
The Lindsays tried their best to maintain their daily routine, mollifying concerns that life would be any different after Nate’s diagnosis.
Shirley would finish her master’s degree while her husband was ill, caring for him while mentoring other families enduring the same hardship she and her family found themselves living through.
“Since Nate’s diagnosis, I’ve seen so many families forced to live with Alzheimer’s. I’ve seen the dysfunction it can cause,” she said. “We really had to learn how to get inside his head.”
Nate’s condition continued to worsen. The mild-mannered general grew irascible with his inability to control his cognitive decline; no longer capable of making a sandwich or even tying his own shoes.
Eventually, Shirley was forced to move him into a memory loss facility.
“He developed aphasia and was unable to speak for the last couple years of his life,” she recalled. “Still, he remembered who we were as a family.”
Nathan Lindsay’s 15-year battle with Alzheimer’s came to an end on May 25, 2015; the day after his 79th birthday.
Three funerals were held in his honor, including his internment at Arlington National Cemetery.
Connecting with the Chambers-Grundy Center for Transformative Neuroscience
Fast forward to May 2022 when Shirley and Annie heard Cummings discussing the work being done with Alzheimer’s research in the Chambers-Grundy Center for Transformative Neuroscience.
Annie was quite familiar with UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences. She graduated from the school in the 1980s and had been recognized as the school’s Alumni of the Year in 2019. Currently a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, she resides in Las Vegas.
“When my mom and I heard Dr. Cummings speak, we knew that we needed to go down there to learn more about what they were doing,” she recalled.
They received a tour from both Cummings and Jefferson Kinney, chair of the Department of Brain Health. They were enamored by the work being done in the field of Alzheimer’s research at UNLV.
“We’ve donated to quite a few nonprofits over the years, but we really felt something unique here,” Annie said.
Fellowship Allows Students to Focus on Research
That uniqueness led to the creation of the Nathan J. Lindsay Brain Health Fellowship. It provides critical financial assistance for students enrolled in the Ph.D. in neuroscience track within the School of Integrated Sciences’ Department of Brain Health.
“When I learned that I was the first student to receive the Lindsay Brain Health Fellowship, I felt so grateful,” said Amanda Osse. “It takes away the burden of having to worry about finances as a full-time student on top of doing research. It has allowed me to focus more on being in the lab, and the more time I spend in the lab, the more answers we get, and the more techniques we can develop to assist Alzheimer’s patients.”
Since receiving the fellowship, Osse has become incredibly close with the Lindsay family.
A native of Seymour, Wisconsin, a single-stop light town in the northeastern part of the state, she learned that Nathan Lindsay had his own Wisconsin roots having grown up in a small town in the southern part of the state and had graduated with his undergraduate degree and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Before coming to UNLV, Osse had graduated with degrees in biology, chemistry, and psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, about 100 miles north of Madison.
Their connection was instant.
“Being able to talk to the Lindsays about Nate and learning more about his Wisconsin roots… it honestly felt like fate,” she said. “They are so passionate about Alzheimer’s. It’s been incredible to learn more about why they are so committed to helping.”
Osse’s research focuses primarily on the mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s and its biomarkers. She works closely with Cummings on clinical trial and drug development research and is helping to bridge the mechanistic side to the clinical trial research side.
With the development of newly FDA-approved medications like Leqembi and Aduhelm, Osse said she’s excited to work in Alzheimer’s research during this groundbreaking time.
She expects to graduate with her Ph.D. in May and would eventually like to have a research lab of her own to keep making a difference in the disease that she and the Lindsays are so passionate about.
“Amanda is brilliant,” Shirley said. “Here she is working in a field where many people her age truly have no idea what Alzheimer’s even is. I have such great faith in Amanda, Dr. Cummings, and Dr. Kinney. Everyone from UNLV has been so incredible. I feel very connected here.”
