Richard Ferry, the Founder of Maude’s Awards, shared an uplifting personal message during our 2025 virtual award announcement, which we have republished here to share that inspiration with our wider dementia care community.
Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today to celebrate the 2025 winners for Maude’s Awards.
Let me share a little historical perspective before introducing the Awards program. The number of persons living with Alzheimer’s is vast and growing. Currently, 7.2 million age 65 and older have the disease, with 13.8 million projected by 2050. The total national cost is equally daunting – based on current 2025 research by the Alzheimer’s Association, the annual cost of Alzheimer’s and other dementias in the United States is estimated to be $384 billion and the cost over the next 26 years is projected to reach $1 trillion.
In addition, care partners and family members contribute an estimated $ 413 billion in unpaid costs annually, with 70% of the care partners experiencing extremely high stress along with their financial challenges.
Recently, thank God — modern medicine achieved an incredibly important milestone with the development and approval of the first medicines known to alter the course of Alzheimer’s. Two medications that can slow the disease’s progression in its early stages are now available by prescription. Regrettably, they are not cures for Alzheimer’s, but are achieving a major advance in efforts to change the course of the disease.
With this as background, we all ask the $64,000 question: when can we expect a cure? The answer is – we simply don’t know. While we are awaiting a cure, the quality and availability of care has become paramount. How can we provide care that will support and enhance the quality of life for the many millions living with Alzheimer’s along with their families and care partners? Six years ago, I decided to launch Maude’s Awards in honor of my beloved wife Maude, who passed away on Labor Day 2021, to help find the care while we are waiting for the cure.
Maude was a matriarch extraordinaire, a community advocate and a philanthropist who had a long and lasting gift of love for all those who walked in her path.
She was a devoted wife for 65 years, my global business partner, my best friend, my golfing buddy, the mother of six wonderful children, and the grandmother and great-grandmother of 17 adorable grandkids. She lived her life with grace and elegance and was a strong role model for all who knew her. I have often described her as the wind beneath my wings.
In Maude’s final years, while she lived with dementia, my life was dedicated to finding ways to engage and comfort her during her illness. The Awards program is the realization of my prayers and dreams to enhance Maude’s life and the lives of those living with dementia. It came to being as the result of my constant search to discover new and innovative concepts and programs to benefit the dementia population in combination with the hiring of a very accomplished and talented Executive Director, Marilyn Raichle, who herself was a care partner for her mother and father, and the author of soon-to-be-a-bestseller Don’t Walk Away: A Care Partner’s Journey; a joyful, hopeful account of a mother and daughter’s life with Alzheimer’s.
Since its founding six years ago, Maude’s Awards has focused on care while we are waiting for the cure. Each year we are thrilled with the discovery of a wide range of new ideas, practices and programs to present to the dementia community.
This year we received a record number of applications and we are so grateful to the number of individuals and organizations who are willing to share their vision and knowledge for the health and well-being of all who are struggling with dementia, their families and their care partners. With this information, we publish an annual handbook to benefit the dementia community. The 2025 book will be available on the Maude’s Awards website in November.
Let me close with a thank-you to our 2025 applicants for sharing their ideas and innovations; to our very extraordinary Executive Director, Marilyn Raichle; to our dedicated Advisory Board members, Marigrace Becker, Dr. Lee Burnside, Dr. Carroll Haymon, Brian Osborn, Carin Mack and Allyson Schrier who evaluate and score the applications and to the Foundation Board who generously provides the funding for the monetary awards.
My sincere congratulations to the 2025 Maude’s Awards winners; God bless you and thank you for joining us today to share your winning story.
Richard Ferry, September 11, 2025