For a few years, Kevin Groshong’s brain wasn’t working the way he wanted it to.

Around Redmond, his wife and friends noticed. He became frustrated, depressed — even a little mean.

His wife, Susan, urged him to see a doctor. And after more than a year of medical tests and specialists, Groshong received a heavy diagnosis — Alzheimer’s disease — at age 69.

A successful businessman with a flair for adventure, Kevin imagined retirement would be chockfull of sailboats and Cessnas, old friends and new grandchildren. Suddenly that all seemed out of reach.

“He got really low,” said Susan Groshong. “He ended up in the hospital. It seemed like that was how it was all going to end.”

But Alzheimer’s didn’t turn out to be any kind of end. Three years post-diagnosis, the Groshongs now see the disease — and then the successful treatment of its symptoms — as the beginning of a new era of creativity and peace for Kevin.

He accessed a new artistic impulse, reconnected with the music of his youth, rekindled a talent for woodworking. He nearly skips across their property most days, jumping chainlink fences like a carefree child, as he goes from one project to the next. He can barely contain how much fun he’s having.

“This really is a new stage for him,” said Susan.

Kevin Groshong agrees. He doesn’t like to think about the past or the future, but concentrates on what’s right in front of him.

“You can still have joy in life, even with this crummy disease,” he said. “I found it in the moment.”

An ironclad routine

Kevin wakes every morning at 5 o’clock, hours before his wife. He feeds the dogs and the birds, then heads out onto Cinder Butte. It’s about a hundred-yard walk from his back door to the top of the rise.

Along the way, the dirt path winds between all sorts of strange creations: stacks of lava rocks, piles of juniper limbs, old advertisements, pieces of ephemera, baseball caps. Some are arranged into human-like shapes.

There are many dozens of the “rock people” — as Groshong calls them — rising up off the butte. He built each one and tinkers with many of them every day.

“I don’t really have any plan,” he said. “I build things, I put them together some way. If the wind knocks them over I don’t care.”

From the top of the butte he can look north over Terrebonne, or west to Black Butte. That is where he meditates every morning and says his prayers.

Longtime friend George Remer helped Groshong get into meditation about 30 years ago, when Kevin was in his 40s and the owner of a successful local trucking company, Sterling Transportation.

“I guess it was kind of strange then,” said Remer. “But he was up for trying it. It’s really paid off all these years later.”

Getting here

Groshong grew up with five siblings mostly around Deschutes Junction. They cowboyed and took part in FFA. Hard work pulled Kevin out of a tough early experience in education, where dyslexia and attention deficit disorder made it difficult for him to read and write. Later, he struggled with alcohol and has spent much of his adult life in recovery.

But his business acumen and work ethic were unparalleled, say friends and family. He worked his way up at The Emporium in Tumalo, then at Butler Aircraft in Redmond. It was there where he fell into a lifelong passion for aviation — a passion only interrupted when a Butler plane crashed on its way to a company picnic in 1979, killing 11 of his close friends and coworkers.

Rattled by the wreck, he made a career change. But his interest in aviation remained high, and soon he earned his pilot’s license.

Experience in the trucking industry led him to start his own company, and his “sterling” reputation got him a lucrative contract to haul merchandise for many of the Grocery Outlet stores along the West Coast. Along the way, he was a supporter of his employees and numerous community causes.

“He wasn’t a fool,” said Remer. “If there was someone he felt was a good person, he tried hard to do anything he could to help them.”

Eventually, Groshong sold the business, made a tidy profit and was raring for a retirement of flying with friends, and sailing in the Caribbean or off the San Juan Islands.

Medication and meditation

But then came Alzheimer’s. Susan said acknowledging that Kevin was struggling and asking for help pushed them out of denial and onto a better path.

“Knowing early has made a huge, huge difference,” she said. “It gave us time to work with the doctors and really get his medication dialed in.”

It took years. But finally, the right mixture has helped reduce symptoms and allowed Kevin to blossom — with the support of his family, friends and his own commitment to look positively at the world.

“I’m like a kid now,” said Kevin. “I don’t look back or forward or get stuck thinking about my disease.”

His friend George Remer agreed. A hard-won simplicity of thought has helped Kevin become happier.

“It’s like he’s gone back in time,” Remer said.

They’ve also dialed in his routine. In addition to waking up early, feeding the dogs and making art, Kevin sits in the hot tub, plays solitaire on the computer, takes naps and goes to to bed at the same time each night. He has surrounded a little workspace with photographs of friends and family that remind of good times. They use a whiteboard to communicate and remind Kevin of things to do or that Susan has just gone to the store.

“If she told me, I wouldn’t remember,” he said.

Little things like that have helped reduce anxiety and allowed him to indulge in the things he likes to do — work with wood, arrange rocks and wood in the back yard, play gin with his wife.

The couple have been keeping score for many years and their cumulative points tally is over 28,000 for each of them.

“Our final score will be on our gravestones,” laughed Susan.

Learning limits

There are things Groshong can’t do. He doesn’t like leaving the butte. He doesn’t drive. He hates traffic. Downtown is too hectic for him. Big gatherings are out, too, because he falls behind in conversation and gets frustrated.

He said Alzheimer’s can cause his brain to just sort of “spin up.” He can’t take negativity, or read too much of the news, or get caught up in the divisiveness of hectic times. He has to keep things simple and his thoughts on the positive side.

He likes talking one-on-one with folks, still. He loves his dogs and a spot of the house he has covered in pictures of friends and family. He enjoys the wood shop and making his “rock people” out back.

He’s feeling good, living in the moment. And he knows how lucky he is to be able to do that.

“It’s not easy,” Groshong winked. “It takes a lot of practice.”