![]() In February 2015, Cassidy filed for bankruptcy. A month after his third arrest in January 2014, his wife, Sue Shifrin-Cassidy, filed for divorce. He’s had multiple arrests for drunk driving, according to USA Today. Even though she stopped being able to speak, Cassidy said would tell her how much he loved her, how beautiful she still was and how good it felt to hold her hand.Ĭassidy’s revelation about his own condition follows a decade of high-profile personal ups and downs and more recent on-stage meltdowns. In her final years, their conversations were limited, with Cassidy only occasionally certain his mother recognized him. “To watch someone who raised you who was so vibrant is the most painful thing I ever experienced.” He talked about his sadness in seeing her decline: “Mom was a wonderful signer, actress and dancer. He immediately became her long-distance caregiver, finding her a place to live in a skilled nursing facility. That’s when Cassidy learned his mother had been struggling with dementia for months or possibly years. Less than 48 hours later, he received a call from the police, saying that his mother had been found in the street in her nightgown, crying. Also her husband, coming from a generation that regarded dementia as making someone “senile” and “crazy” and therefore having something shameful, apparently covered for her and always assured Cassidy on the phone that she was doing fine.īut a few months after his mother’s husband died, Cassidy learned the truth about his mother when he got a call from a friend of hers saying she hadn’t been doing well lately. He said his mother also was living in a different state, so he didn’t see up close how she was struggling. Kildare” and “Ben Casey.” Like many others, Cassidy told, he didn’t pay much attention to the first signs of Alzheimers-related dementia in his mother: how, for example, she couldn’t remember names well. Towards the end of his life, Jack Cassidy displayed increasingly erratic behavior and died in a fire in his apartment in 1976 when he fell asleep with a lit cigarette. His stepmother is Shirley Jones, who co-starred with him in “The Partridge Family,” a 1970s sitcom about a widow and her five children who tour together as a rock band.Īs an actress, Cassidy’s mother Evelyn Ward appeared on Broadway and in classic TV shows such as “Perry Mason,” “Dr. His father was actor Jack Cassidy who suffered from bipolar disorder and alcoholism. “I wanted to educate and tell my story.”Ĭassidy comes from a Hollywood family with its share of tragedy. “I wanted to use my notoriety to put myself in a position to help others,” he said in an interview with. His aim wasn’t just to educate the public but to acknowledge people who take care of parents with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, and the daily struggle of watching a parent’s decline. During the performance, Cassidy slurred his words and forgot lyrics, prompting the gossip website to speculate that Cassidy had “fallen off the wagon,” a reference to Cassidy’s long struggle with alcohol abuse, including a stint in rehab in 2014.īut the truth lay in Cassidy’s tragic family history with dementia.īefore his mother died in 2012 at age 89, Cassidy had become a spokesman for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America and the Alzheimer’s Research & Prevention Foundation, traveling around the nation to tell his personal story about his mother’s dementia. I want to enjoy life.”Ĭassidy decided to go public with his diagnosis a day after TMZ posted a video of him at a concert near Los Angeles over the weekend. “I want to focus on what I am, who I am and how I’ve been without any distractions,” he says. “I was in denial, but a part of me always knew this was coming,” he told the magazine.Ĭassidy, 66, also revealed that he has decided to stop touring as a musician to concentrate on his health and happiness. On Monday, Cassidy acknowledged that he, too, is struggling with the disorder in an interview with People. The former teen idol and “Partridge Family” actor watched his grandfather struggle with dementia and his mother “disappear” from it as well. David Cassidy arrested by Tom Jones, faces felony DUI charge
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