STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS BY KIRSTIN WEBSTER

Jenny Gatehouse may not be able to walk, anymore. But even Parkinson’s Disease can’t keep her from flying.

The 5-foot 100-pound, 58-year-old Ketchum woman got to cross that off her bucket list this weekend as friends, staff from Higher Ground Sun Valley, Fly Sun Valley and Sun Valley Resort came together to send her soaring through the skies above Baldy Mountain.

“Now, THAT’S a bike ride! Pretty amazing!” said Gatehouse’s former caretaker Maureen van Amerongen as she watched Gatehouse circle the royal blue sky in an adaptive paragliding buggy under Higher Ground’s wing. “I loved seeing the cycle in the sky. It looked so serene. It was pretty amazing!

“She looked like E.T.—the Extra-Terrestrial—floating down to us. If that’s not the way to celebrate National Parkinson’s Awareness Month, I don’t know what is!” said Kirstin Webster, internship and impact manager for Higher Ground.

About four dozen friends and staff from Higher Ground gathered at the River Run parking lot Friday morning to toast Gatehouse’s ride with orange juice and caramel iced donuts.

Sun Valley Company cranked up the gondola and the Christmas chairlift to help her get to the top since the ski runs and cat tracks were still covered with snow.

Chuck Smith of Fly Sun Valley accompanied her, along with Rob Curran, a former Sun Valley ski patrolman, and his Higher Ground comrades Shane Carlson and Basil Service, who skied with Gatehouse this past winter at River Run.

They arrived on top at 9 in the morning, but a stiff devil wind that shifted every which way kept them grounded. Finally, at about 11:30 a.m., Gatehouse and Chuck Smith lifted off in the tandem buggy, enjoying a smooth flight as they circled around for more than 15 minutes against the backdrop of Bald Mountain crowned in white against the blue spring sky.

The event was put together by Lee Edgerton.

“Jenny is 18 years into Parkinson’s and she’s fought the good fight for so long. We figured she can no longer walk, but she can fly,” said Janis Storey.

Gatehouse—an avid skier, hiker and bicyclist—was 38 when she started noticing some shaking on her right side while pregnant with her second son in 2001.

She brushed it at off at first, thinking it was just a side effect of pregnancy. She was busy fighting colon cancer at the time, anyway.

She was able to declare victory over the cancer in six months with surgery and chemotherapy. But the shakiness she had felt turned out to be early-onset Parkinson’s Disease. And, try as she might, she could not vanquish that.

The legs that loved to hike up Baldy began to teeter and totter and her body swayed back and forth uncontrollably. Her speech began to slur, her words trailing to a whisper. And she could only get to sleep with the help of sleeping pills.

She ran the Baldy Hill Climb to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Disease Foundation in 2004. And in 2007 she underwent elective deep brain stimulation, having wires threaded through her brain and neck to connect to a device similar to a cardiac pacemaker inserted into her chest.

The pacemaker sent low-level pulses to the part of her brain that need stimulation. It quieted her legs, which had been shaking controllably. And it allowed her to again perform such simple tasks as tying her children’s shoelaces.

But, over time, the symptoms became more pronounced. She froze on occasion, her feet stuck to the ground and her body turned as rigid as a two-by-four.

In 2014 her friends held an Art Cures benefit to raise $17,000 for a Stemgenex stem cell treatment where she was injected with stem cells from animals. The hope was that they would grow cells that would take over for her poorly performing dopamine-producing cells.

And Gatehouse continued working at what she could do to keep her body moving.

She walked the bike path near her home south of Ketchum. She rode an adult tricycle.

Jenny took physical therapy, practicing standing from a chair and sitting down. She did heel-to-toe raises with her eyes open and closed. And she worked on her balance as she practiced picking her feet up and putting them down as she stepped over things.

She practiced talking and singing, trying to exceed the 80-decibel mark on her computer. And, then, when her voice failed her, she let her eyes do the talking.

Jenny also took advantage of all the therapeutic recreational programs the valley offered, including Swiftsure Ranch’s therapeutic riding program, AquAbility’s swimming program and Higher Ground’s ski program.

“She ripped it up on snow,” said Jeff Burley of Higher Ground. “We started with her last year over on Dollar Mountain. And she wanted to stand up so we used a Slider, which looks like a walker with skis. We skied with her twice a week this year on Lower River Run. And it didn’t matter what the weather was like—even on big powder days she was out there, wanting to ski.”

Gatehouse, who attended New England College in New Hampshire, followed friends to Sun Valley from her hometown of Long Island, N.Y., in 1984. She fell in love with everything Sun Valley had to offer, from downhill skiing to tennis.

Jenny worked for a while at Creekside Restaurant at the bottom of Warm Springs. Then she landed a job as a fund raiser for the Bill Janss Community Center, or what became the Wood River Community YMCA.

“She’s such a caring giving person—she was always driving her kids and others’ kids to things,” said Jim Rollerson, whose sons grew up with Jenny’s two sons.

Gatehouse was always up for a party and she was fearless when it came to outdoor pursuits.

“We went to the top at Jackson when they had the tram and the wind was so strong it blew us backwards. But she didn’t let it stop her. She just dropped in and went down the iciest chute,” recalled Mary Beth Chandler. “I think she took up hockey, playing for the Sunsets, after she’d been diagnosed. She kept moving as long as she could.”

Gatehouse especially loved tandem biking with Maureen van Amerongen to Ketchum where they’d have lunch and hang out in Ketchum Town Square.

“It made her feel normal--people couldn’t see her struggling when she was on a bike,” said van Amerongen. “Every time I’m with her I think: There but for the grace of God and good genes go I.”

WHAT IS PARKINSON’S?

Parkinson’s Disease, a progressive disease, affects one in 100 people over 60. It kills dopamine-producing nerve cells, or neurons, that allow message to be set to the parts of the brain that control movement.

As dopamine nerve cells die, Parkinson’s patients develop tremors and rigidity, and their movements slow down. They might also lose their sense of smell or suffer from sleep disorders, depression, and sometimes dementia in the later stages of the disease.

Scientists do not know what causes Parkinson's, but about 10 percent of the cases appear to be genetically related. Men are more at risk than women. It’s believed that pesticides increase the risk of getting the disease, while drinking coffee appears to reduce the risk.