About Abe's Garden

• How Abe's Garden is Unique
• Founder's Story
• Who is Abe?

 

Founder’s Story

Since 2005, I have been involved in a personal effort to establish an Alzheimer’s and adult care community in Nashville to be known as Abe’s Garden.  This effort evolved from a personal experience with my father, Abram C. Shmerling, M.D., that was brought in full view by the limited availability of quality services and care dedicated to a rapidly growing population of Alzheimer’s and dementia victims. 

While our city has much to be proud of in the way of culture, arts, sports, and academics, Nashville can also be nationally renowned for its commitment to medical and living facilities for those struggling with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.  My passion for this endeavor grew daily as my family and I watched – virtually helpless – while Dad suffered for more than 11 years with the disease, finally succumbing in November of 2006.

This experience, while devastating to our family, opened my eyes to the dramatic need for a facility whose heart and soul would be centered on caring for those sharing this same fate.  Mindful that there are no proven treatments or cures for Alzheimer’s or dementia, our only viable recourse today is to improve the quality of life for the victims and their families through a facility designed specifically for that purpose.  When you learn more, as I have, about the tremendous growth in the numbers of those suffering, coupled with the future statistics predicated on longer life expectancies, I am confident you too will recognize and appreciate the need is eminent.

Abe's Garden will be growing in many directions, so I hope you will return to share in the most current goals and achievments.

Our hope is that in addition to being a nurturing and caring place for individuals with Alzheimer’s or dementia, Abe’s Garden will also become a center of study - bearing fruit in the form of valuable knowledge about this disease.  We will operate as a not-for-profit enterprise, which is the only way my Dad would have wanted his name to have been associated. I am committed both emotionally and financially to make this dream a reality.

I hope that as you learn more about Abe’s Garden, you will find a way to help in this monumental task.  I am extremely grateful for the support, wide spread acceptance and unbelievable encouragement received to date about our vision for Abe’s Garden, but I need your involvement.

Thanks for visiting and allowing us to share with you our ideas for creating something great.  To be kept informed as our plans develop, subscribe online.

Michael D. Shmerling
Chairman of the Board