Brain and Life  |  03.01.2020

Lynda Carter Advocates for Those with Alzheimer’s Disease

Stacey Colino

The actress and singer raises awareness of the disease as a way to honor her mother.

She’s best known for her role as Wonder Woman on the hit 1970s TV show, but Lynda Carter’s accomplishments go well beyond that iconic persona. She has raised two children and been an activist on issues such as breast cancer and LGBTQ rights. She’s also written songs and made many other television appearances, including hosting Street Life, the 1982 Emmy-nominated TV special that featured castanets and flamenco dance in a nod to Carter’s Hispanic heritage. Music is Carter’s first love, and she has performed at Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Dallas.

But for more than 16 years—ever since her late mother, Juanita Cordova Carter, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003 at age 79—Carter has played her most important role: advocating for more awareness and research funding for the disease. She recently began lending her name and support to Maria Shriver’s Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement. She also serves on an executive committee for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1998 by the Lauder family to support Alzheimer’s disease research worldwide.

At the time of her diagnosis, Carter’s mother, who was known as Jean and whose family came from Mexico, was living alone in the Phoenix area, where Carter and her two siblings were raised. Carter, who lives outside Washington, DC, would fly to Arizona to see Jean every couple of months. Over time, she began to notice changes in her mother’s behavior and signs of cognitive decline. “She would get angry if she had to drive at night,” Carter recalls. Her mother, who had been independent and social and drove everywhere, was suddenly reluctant to drive. When Carter came to town and stayed at her brother’s house, it would upset Jean if Carter asked her to come over in the afternoon. “She’d want to leave before dark because she couldn’t remember the street numbers and would get lost,” Carter says. read more