So What is This About?

My interest in Alzheimer's disease began in March 1999, when my husband, Carl Pfeifer, was unable to give a scheduled talk that he had carefully prepared. He opened his mouth to speak and try as he might, nothing came out. His notes slipped out of his hands and fell to the floor leaving both of us dumbfounded and embarrassed. The following week we visited a neurologist which was the beginning of a long journey of trying to find out what was going on. Only after several years of visiting psychiatrists, who thought his losses were caused by long-term depression, did a geriatric psychiatrist give us a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

My consuming interest up to that time was in education and Religious Education. In 1960 I graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education and a minor in History from Briar Cliff College in Sioux City, Iowa. While I was getting that degree I taught junior high and elementary grades in Ossian and Dubuque, Iowa, and in Chicago, Illinois.

In the fall of 1962 I was sent by my community, the Franciscan Sisters of Dubuque, Iowa, to the National Center of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine to work with four other nuns to write a religion book to replace the Baltimore Catechism. Eventually I was the only one of the five writers remaining on the project. While writing I began work on a Master's degree in Religious Education at The Catholic University of America where I met Carl, a Missouri Province Jesuit, who was pursuing a D.Min. in Theology. He gradually joined me at the National CCD Center where we both became Assistant Directors. Together we created a religion series, published by Silver Burdett in Morristown, New Jersey, that replaced the Baltimore Catechism and made a radical difference in the religious education of Catholic children in the United States.

We wrote extensively beyond the creation of textbooks, traveled to dioceses around the country giving presentations to religious educators and taught summer sessions at The Catholic University of America, St. Michael's College in Winooski, Vermont, and Mundelein College in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1976 we left our respective communities to marry, began our own free-lancing business, LIFE, LOVE, JOY Associates, and continued to write religion textbooks and other materials for religious educators.

In 2004 and 2005 I become one of the five co-authors of both books: Alzheimer's Disease -- The Dignity Within: A Handbook for Caregivers, Family, and Friends and A Caregiver's Guide to Alzheimer's Disease: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier.