“Jungle Jack” Hanna’s family has revealed that the beloved former zookeeper goes through an “advanced” stage of Alzheimer’s where he has no recollection of most of his family members.
“The Jack people used to know is gone, but there are pieces of my husband,” says his wife Suzi Hanna said The Columbus Dispatch. “And I will persist with them for so long as possible.”
Jack’s wife and daughters Kathaleen, Suzanne and Julie, revealed that he now only remembers his wife of 54 years, his dog Brassy and sometimes his eldest daughter Kathaleen.
Since 2019, he has been fighting the disease privately.
The 76-year-old resigned as director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio in December 2020.
“He just stopped remembering who I’m in every way. Whether in person or over the phone, he had no idea I used to be his daughter,” Suzanne said. “I feel it’s because he didn’t see me that much because I got married so young and moved out.”
Continuing to fight the disease, Jack notices that the one sense of normalcy is taking every day two-mile walks with Suzi.
“I need to persist with these walks so long as possible,” she told the outlet. “I remember the day all of it officially began. The day the doctor told us what it was. From then on, I just tried to persist with Jack’s little pieces. “
“My husband continues to be on the market somewhere,” Suzi continued. “There are still those sweet, tender moments – you realize, bits of him that made me and the remaining of the world fall in love with him.”
Suzi said taking care of her husband was “some days really hard but he has taken care of me all these years so now it’s my turn to take care of him.”
Elsewhere, Jack’s eldest daughter, Kathaleen, said they decided to share such intimate details of her dad’s condition in a desperate try and help others coping with the identical thing.
“If it helps yet one more family, it’s price sharing your dad’s story,” said Kathaleen. “He spent his whole life helping everyone he could. He’ll never know or understand it, but he still does.”
“He only retired because of Alzheimer’s,” she added. “He was ashamed of it. He lived in fear that the general public would discover.”
Kathaleen said her dad would “work until the day he died”.
And despite the increasing difficulty in coping with Jack’s declining health, Suzi said she was not searching for help.
“I just want it to be your dad and me for so long as possible,” she told her daughters. “River, sun, Brassy, our walks. That is all we’ve left.”
Hanna’s daughters first revealed their father’s diagnosis in a letter shared by the Columbus Zoo in April 2021.
“His condition has deteriorated much faster over the previous couple of months than any of us could have expected,” they wrote on the time. “Unfortunately, Dad can now not take part in public life like he used to, where people all over the world watched, learned and laughed with him.”