Photographs by William Taufic.
Paul Green lives with his wife, Eleanor, on Old Mill Beach in Westport, a place their twenty-two grandchildren like to visit in the summer. On a pleasant August morning, Paul might be found rowing up the Saugatuck River, as part of his daily hour to hour-and-a-half exercise regimen. After that, it’s time for a Japanese lesson and then perhaps a ballroom dancing class. That’s quite a schedule for any octogenarian, never mind an eighty-eight-year-old who has been living with Parkinson’s disease for nearly fifteen years. 
Paul was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a progressive and potentially debilitating disease, at the age of seventy-five. A Brown grad who served in the Navy in WWII, Paul wasn’t about to sit around and wait for a cure. “It was a shocking diagnosis, but I decided to fight back,” he explains. “I felt instinctively that if I could exercise and get the blood flow to the brain, I could slow the progression of the disease. At the time doctors didn’t give much credence to exercise. It’s different today.”
For some doctors, it’s different because they’ve seen what happened when Paul implemented an ambitious program of exercises that build flexibility, strength, balance and stamina, in addition to activities that challenge the mind. “Without my program, I might be in a wheelchair,” says Paul. Instead, he’s just competed in the USRowing Masters National Championship. He won a bronze medal but admits “there were only three boats in the eighty-and-above category.” Recently he’s decided to learn to play the piano. “I’m driving everyone in the house crazy,” he says, chuckling.
After a career publishing magazines designed to help developing nations, Paul wanted to share his approach for combating Parkinson’s with the world. He set up his foundation, Nevah Surrendah, five years ago. “It’s named after Winston Churchill, my hero,” explains Paul. “He stood up against tremendous opposition, persevered and won.”
To fight Parkinson’s, Paul insists, “The No. 1 weapon is a positive attitude. It’s absolutely essential. Roughly 50 percent of people with Parkinson’s are depressed.” Nevahsurrendah.com gives sufferers everywhere a place to find support. Locally, Paul facilitates a Parkinson’s Disease support group at the Senior Center in Westport, where he organized an event with a Zumba instructor and reggae band. Paul raves, “We got people who hadn’t moved in years up and dancing!”
Barbara Butler, the town of Westport’s human services director, says, “Paul is extraordinary. He has shown Parkinson’s sufferers a happier, more fulfilling way of living. With his optimistic spirit, Paul teaches us to accept that we may encounter illness as we grow older, but we can still live full lives.”