News
Shailer Handyside, Oldest Member of Alpha-1 Research Registry, Dies at 89
LONGWOOD, FL – Shailer Handyside, the oldest member of the Alpha-1 Foundation Research Registry, died Jan. 12 at age 89. He had been hospitalized with pneumonia.
The Research Registry Update, the newsletter of the Registry based at the Medical University of South Carolina, carried a feature story on Handyside in its fall 2006 issue. In the article, he suggested the simple message he could offer to other Alphas was “have a positive outlook and stay active.” Born June 15, 1918, he would have been 90 this year.
Handyside played trumpet for many years, even after his original diagnosis of “severe asthma,” and he continued to play golf and walk three to four miles a day. A lifetime non-smoker, he saw several physicians in an attempt to gain an understanding of his increasing shortness of breath. He was finally diagnosed correctly with a ZZ genotype in 1995, when he was already 77. (One doctor had told him he was “too old” to have Alpha-1!) He had lung volume reduction surgery and spent more than 10 years on Alpha-1 augmentation therapy.
Handyside began trumpet lessons at age six. He once played a solo with the Cleveland Symphony, and played in a jazz band while in college. He served in World War II and spent 39 years as an auditor with General Electric Co.
Even well into his 80s, Handyside was a regular walker for exercise and delivered the community newsletter to apartment complexes in The Villages, a retirement community center in Florida. Near the very end of his life he was slowed by vision problems, arthritic degeneration of the spine (from a wrestling injury dating back to his days as a champion prep school wrestler in Ohio) and increasing shortness of breath.
He is survived by his wife Katherine, with whom he had been married for 64 years, and two sons.
