Best known for her leading roles in recent Broadway revivals The King and I, South Pacific, and Nice Work If You Can Get It, Kelli O’Hara sang at a dinner to benefit the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) at the Pierre Hotel last week. Of course she sang “I Have Dreamed” and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” but her rendition of “If You Knew Susie,” not part of her repertoire, was bittersweet, as it was a personal tribute to Susan Newhouse, a vibrant philanthropist who succumbed to this disease, a form of dementia. Donald Newhouse presented the Susan Newhouse and SI Newhouse Award of Hope to David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery Communications.

Introduced by host Paula Zahn, speaker after speaker emphasized, this is not Alzheimer’s, but has a devastating effect, particularly on language. Daniel Hedaya and Olivia Goldring spoke of family members, prominent individuals reduced in their capacity to speak; the brain degenerates from there until vital life capacity is extinguished. As this was the inaugural event, the hope is that research and cure will follow.

Regina Weinreich

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