The story below is from our March/April 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Meet three more local female trailblazers! Read about Sinkland Farms owner Susan Sink here; Big Lick Boomerang owner Diane Rumbolt here; and Carilion emergency medicine physician Dr. Jessica Gehner here.
Parkinson’s Disease has slowed down the former director of Local Colors, but exercise keeps her going.
Dan Smith
Pearl Fu
There is a distinct contradiction to Pearl Fu these days.
First comes the sunny, optimistic, talky, energetic and accomplished Roanoke icon, known and loved widely.
Then, there is the realist who, for the past 20 years, has battled Parkinson’s Disease, a debilitating and often depressing condition.
Pearl Fu has spent the better part of the last 25 years inspiring people in the Roanoke Valley and beyond with her humanity and her efforts at inclusion. Today, that uncommon energy is focused on the strange, perplexing and often devastating opponent that is Parkinson’s.
Her life, she says, has become “a complete opposite” of the lively, social, go-everywhere, do-everything woman she was only a short few years ago. “I wish I could still do those things. My mind wants to, but my body won’t listen.”
More than a million Americans confront Parkinson’s daily, some with great grace and strength—as does Pearl Fu. The immigrant from China is loath to discuss her age but suffice to say she is well into Social Security territory and her treatment for the physically debilitating disease centers around her daily exercise regimen, mostly at Roanoke’s Kirk YMCA, where she takes water exercise, yoga classes and lifts weights.
These classes have replaced the social life she once so loved and she puts the same energy into the six-days-a-week classes she did in Local Colors or any of the other organizations she worked with and for. “I was always active with daily exercise,” she says, but today there is an importance—even an urgency—to the workouts because they keep her mentally and physically as fit as she can be.
Sarah Early, who teaches Fu’s chair yoga class, says the class “starts with a laugh” and leans toward community-building. Disease and age “need a community,” says Early. Exercise classes present “a whole passel of new friends, who become like family.”
“I still don’t understand how I got Parkinson’s,” Fu says, sounding bewildered. She was diagnosed in 1999 and now, “I can’t remember common things. It used to be so easy for me to speak, to give talks without notes. I need notes now, but usually I forget to bring them.” She laughs at herself, as she often does.
Roanoke Vice Mayor Joe Cobb, a long-time friend, says, “Pearl is an international treasure who has transformed Roanoke through the power of love and the nature of relationship. She has the extraordinary gift of meeting everyone where they are and leading them to a new understanding of who they can become in [the] community. This is the essence of meaningful hospitality.” And that’s where some of her frustration lies.
“Mostly, it’s frustrating not remembering people’s names, people I know. I miss the advocacy. I used to see people mistreated and was able to jump right in, to help negotiate. Now, I don’t because I can’t find the words. I miss not being involved, creating ways to help.” She is quiet for a moment, then says, “Most Chinese are quieter than me.” She smiles again.
All of that leads to occasional depression, says Pearl. “I try to meditate and think positive things,” she says. “I try to think of the things I can still do well. I talk to people doing something constructive. I try to do something new. And I laugh. Laughter is good.”
Her physician, Dr. Joseph Ferrara, a noted neurologist, says flatly that “for the average patient with Parkinson Disease, regular aerobic exercise is as important as medications. … fatigue, depression, sleep and impaired cognition respond to endurance exercise training, at least to some extent. In some patients we see marked improvements in the smoothness of medication effect and balance.” That’s pretty much the result Pearl has experienced, she says.
These days, Pearl makes a special effort to get to potlucks of various types, often with foreign cuisine at the center. She is a notable cook and used to have her own television cooking show. “I can’t cook now,” she says, “but I can still eat everything. It’s a good thing my husband is a good cook.” C.C. Fu is a retired engineer.
Walking is perhaps the most difficult of her daily routines. “The stiffness has gotten worse,” she says. “My legs freeze and that’s one reason I don’t like to go to public places.” She moves at an iceberg pace, using a walker. Getting into and out of automobiles is a challenge and simply sitting down after maneuvering to a chair is a chore. “Sometimes I march to a tune,” she says. “It helps when I sing, but my voice is out of tune.” She majored in music in college, so her voice is a sensitive issue.
She insists that the Parkinson’s she has “is not normal Parkinson’s. I don’t have some of the symptoms like tremors.”
Ferrara says, “Some evidence suggests that aerobic exercise slows the progression of PD, so the potential gains may accrue over time, and early initiation is preferable.” There are risks with the exercise (there’s even a boxing class for patients), but the rewards are noteworthy.
“I hate the idea of slowness,” Pearl says, “and I stay more in the background now and don’t talk as much.” It is, she says, “a constant battle. Anxiety is bad and I worry about things I didn’t used to.”
She has concerns “about my husband, who is 10 years older than I. He’s tired and we have no family here.” They have considered moving closer to family. “He is my caregiver,” she says,” a gentleness in her voice. “He drives, cleans house, grocery shops, gives me my medicine. I would forget.”
Pearl, though, remains undaunted and undeterred, though often conflicted and contradictory in her feelings about the disease’s widespread effects on her lifestyle. “I always feel like a kid,” she says with the notable enthusiasm she has always harbored. “But it’s hard.”
Still, says Barbara Durek, a longtime supporter of Local Colors, “Pearl … has been able to change the world and make it a better place.” Past Local Colors Chairwoman Jennifer Pfister concludes that “her love for all people of Roanoke is what makes her ... Queen of the Valley.”
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