Helping hands ……. #AlexOLoughlin: “My mother’s loving touch” #WalkToDefeatALS

Alex O’Loughlin and Fred Fisher – a radio interview with Dave Lawrence from Helping Hands

Friday afternoon, 5 September 2014 on Hawaii Public Radio

Dave: Alex, what brings you to the table?

Alex: Well, thanks for having me first of all. ALS is something that is kind of pretty up close and personal for me. My wife’s mother passed of ALS.

Seeing how it affected my in-laws and my wife. And also strangely enough, one of my close friends lost his father last Monday.

Dave: Alex, I was reading a little about you. I had read that your mom was a nurse.

I was wondering if her background in that role has brought to bear any kind of sense of responsibility for others or imperative to give back.

Alex: I’m really glad that you mention that Dave. My mom was a nurse. She was a great nurse. She was a community nurse in Australia. I remember vividly sick days, if I had a little cold or something and wasn’t going to school or perhaps on a weekend, I would do rounds with her.

Doing house calls for people who couldn’t leave their houses, or for whom it was extremely difficult to leave their house. So this is people who suffered from paraplegia, quadriplegia, Cerebral Palsy and of course Lou Gehrig’s disease, as it was known back then.

I met all these men and women and I got to know and love a few of them as well. And that was really important for me, because I got to see past that really quickly to the people. To get to know them and to become friends and really get to love some of them.

I remember my friend Michael Lanagan, he must have been about mid-30’s I guess, while I was like 5. I remember his house was all set up and he had ramps and he was quadriplegic. He had handles and a special bed.

What I remember so clearly, even at such a young age, looking at the situation and knowing that if my mom was not there that he’d be in trouble, you know, if somebody else wasn’t there, there was a lot to his life. And I was profoundly affected by that.

Dave: I think it is a great tribute to your mom, that all those time that she took you, that you never forgot it. And that you were able to incorporate that in your life about giving back.

Alex: That’s a really important piece, is that we will keep every dollar that we earn and raise here in the Hawaii Island to create care facilities that don’t exist.

Dave: And Alex O’Loughlin from Hawaii Five-0, please as well stay in touch and any time you want to support a cause and help out the disabled or others in need, I hope you’d come on this Helping Hands segment and let us help spread the word. I do appreciate your time.

Alex: Aloha Dave. Thank you very much.

Audio clip of Alex:

For the rest of the interview with Dave Lawrence  and Fred Fisher, use this link

And we just got the first pictures of Alex at The Walk to defeat ALS.

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