Carlen Maddux grew up in a small town in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee. He left there at age 18 For Atlanta to take a full football scholarship at Georgia Tech, where he practiced a lot but didn’t play. His roommate at Tech dated  Martha, Carlen’s future wife. Carlen and his roommate then went to graduate business school at the University of North Carolina, which Martha also subsequently attended. Carlen’s roommate ultimately married Martha’s roommate at UNC. Life can get complicated.

After vainly trying to become hippies before kids, Martha and Carlen lived in Santa Fe, NM, and in the Bayou country of Louisiana. They ultimately moved to Martha’s hometown of St. Petersburg, FL when she was pregnant with their first child. Carlen cut his journalistic teeth at the nationally recognized St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) before starting his own regional business magazine covering the Tampa Bay area. That magazine published for 26 years until it was closed when Martha was deep into Alzheimer’s. Martha meanwhile was active in local politics and civic activities. She served on the St. Petersburg City Council for six years in the mid-80s; that council made the controversial decision to build what’s known today as Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. She also ran for an open seat on the Florida state Legislature a year before she was diagnosed, which she (fortunately) lost by 25 votes.

Martha and Carlen were happily and busily married for 25 years working in their designated fields and rearing three wonderful children when in 1997 she was suddenly diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She was 50, he was 52, and David, Rachel, and Kathryn were still in high school and college. The 17-year odyssey began. Martha died June 30, 2014.  

Carlen has written about their 17-year experience through Alzheimer’s in his book titled: A Path Revealed: How Hope, Love, and Joy Found Us Deep in a Maze Called Alzheimer’s.

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