Parkinson’s disease was given a very public face when actor Michael J. Fox was first diagnosed with it nearly 30 years ago. It’s a debilitating disease that affects about one million people in this country. There’s no could eventually reverse the effects the disease has on the body.
In music, timing is everything. Bill Crawford, you could say, is the beat that keeps his congregation tapping their toes on Sunday mornings.
As longtime music pastor at Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington, Crawford has kept the beat, until one day it wasn’t there.
“I couldn’t match the beat, I couldn’t find the beat and I couldn’t feel it,” he said.
In 2004, at the age of 44, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a progressive disorder that affects part of the brain regulating movement.
“It started a long time ago with my finger on my right hand, it started twitching and I couldn’t stop it.”