Illinois Daughter is passionate about making aging with dignity a reality
Sometimes the best ideas come when you least expect them. That was true for Mary Harroun, who was reminiscing about her son enjoying his baby walker when a lightbulb went off: What if she could take the concept of a baby walker and adapt it into a wheelchair alternative for adults?
As a geriatric recreational therapist and former nursing home administrator, Ms. Harroun saw firsthand how restrictive wheelchairs were for elderly residents who are not allowed to walk on their own. Wheelchairs offer limited independence for users, but also lead to muscle atrophy and pressure sores. Traditional walkers work best for those who just need a little bit of help getting around.
Enter the Merry Walker, the framed tubular steel ambulation device that Ms. Harroun invented after her lightbulb moment. Unlike a traditional, forward-pushing walker, the Merry Walker offers support all around the user—not just in front of them. A gate in the front allows for easy use, while a weighted bottom makes it more tip-resistant. There’s also a padded seat in the rear, as opposed to the front, for an easier transition from standing to sitting.
Ms. Harroun was awarded two U.S. patents for the device and has since fended off countless copycats, invented and manufactured other assistive devices, and published four books, all in the name of promoting quality of life and decreasing “learned dependency” among the elderly.
Her advocate mentality has been a mainstay throughout her career. Even as a volunteer music therapist, she routinely pushed the bounds of typical care. “The director of volunteers told me that if the administrator had been aware of the music therapy I was providing to the residents, she might have been fired,” said the member of North Shore Chapter, Lake Forest, Ill. “But that makes no sense, because I was bringing laughter and memory back to the residents.”
Later, as a director of recreation, she continued to delight residents with a full roster of fun and meaningful daily activities. They went apple picking. They baked apple pies. They went camping, to the circus and to baseball games.
“As long as it’s safe and set up for their needs, why not?” she said. “I didn’t treat them as elderly. I treated them as people. And so many of them are not treated that way.”
Ms. Harroun’s latest project is a workbook for adult children to use with their parents to assist them with aging in place, which is another topic she’s passionate about.
“I discourage people my age and older from living in assisted living facilities because of the learned dependency that follows,” she said. “They learn to become dependent on staff for their basic needs, and it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Ms. Harroun and her husband, Warren Young, have gone through the workbook process in their own home, and when the time comes, they’ll be ready to age in place, too.
“It involved a lot of decluttering,” she said. “We realized it’s important to have one of what you need, but it’s a problem if you have seven of them.”
Ms. Harroun writes her books in the winter, “because in all the other seasons I’m too busy with my garden,” she said.
Her lakeside property is landscaped primarily with native wildflowers. As the Conservation Committee Chair of the North Shore Chapter, Ms. Harroun has enjoyed learning about the variety of indigenous plants and the purpose they served to the area American Indian tribes. “My chapter will come here in the summer, and we’ll walk through the garden and talk about how all the plants were used,” she said. “I’m also hoping to be able to play my Native American flute, but I’ll need to get a lot better at it first. I have a background in music and can play several instruments, but this one is proving to be very different.”
