VillageLivingOnline.com
February 2014
Village Living Volume 4 | Issue 11 | February 2014
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neighborly news & entertainment for Mountain Brook
A daily dedication
The Ride to Change the Future will raise awareness for ovarian cancer this month. Find details inside.
Community page 13
To Pasadena
Twice a day Wilmer Poynor walks around Colonial Brookwood Village and fist bumps everyone he passes. The retired insurance salesman suffered a stroke at age 71, but it hasn’t stopped him from bringing smiles to everyone he meets. Photo by Alec Dixon.
By MADOLINE MARKHAM
Mountain Brook Auburn fans sent in their photos from the BCS game.
Community page 20
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Wilmer Poynor III made birthday phone calls 365 days a year for 50 years. His life was the insurance business, selling for New York Life, just as his father, Wilmer Jr., had. And each day of his career, he would call whichever client had a birthday that day. “They were his friends as well as his clients,” his wife, Carol, said. By the end of his career, he was serving his clients’ children as well. He never would have retired if it weren’t for his stroke. At 71, Wilmer lost the function of the right side of his body. His stroke affected the left hemisphere of his brain, but the same spirit he put into those birthday calls remained. When he arrived at Lakeshore Rehabilitation Hospital after the stroke, his music therapist immediately recognized him.
“He’s been calling me every year on my birthday,” she told Carol. A new normal Since his stroke, Wilmer can understand everything he hears and knows what he wants to say, but speaking is a struggle. He works every day to relearn how to do what had come so naturally for 71 years of his life. He was one of the first patients to go through a special speech therapy program at UAB called constraint induced aphasia therapy. For three weeks, he spent five hours a day working on speaking words, and Carol was by his side for all of it. “I thought I would drop him off, but the caregiver is as much a part of the program as the participant,” she said. She would help ask him questions and familiarize herself with the therapy so she could help
him with his homework. “He was always so dedicated,” she said. His therapy didn’t end there, though. Wilmer is as active as he can be. “He never gives up and never takes no for an answer,” Carol said. “I have cried a lot of happy tears seeing how hard he works.” By the end of the third week at Lakeshore, he would walk so fast that everyone started calling him “NASCAR Man.” Still the same Wilmer Though he can’t speak more than a few words, Wilmer can still sing his way right through a hymnal. The part of your brain that allows you to sing is on the opposite side from the one that controls speech. He and Carol enjoy singing together at home
See DEDICATION | page 29
Grand Bohemian groundbreaking sets hotel project in motion See page 28 Mayor Terry Oden and The Kessler Collection executives break ground for the Grand Bohemian Hotel Mountain Brook in front of the new Lane Parke apartment development. Photo by Madoline Markham.
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