and listening to inspirational music. It also reinforces selfcare for caregivers.( Read more about the ACTS2 project at ACTS2project. org)
Elizabeth Fields, president of the Haq Family Foundation’ s Board of Trustees, said it was“ happenstance” that she learned about ACTS2 through a conversation with Glueckauf, not about the foundation, but related to her work as a non-profit fundraiser. Later,“ it occurred to me,‘ Wait a minute, I know an organization that I think could really use this money for a good cause.’”
A strong sense of family
Karen Haq watched her father, Subhanul“ Sam” Haq, a gifted engineer who held several patents for biomedical devices, serve as primary caregiver for her mother, Najma Haq, who had multiple chronic health challenges. The couple emigrated from Pakistan when Sam was awarded a scholarship to the Indiana Institute of Technology, where he earned a bachelor’ s degree.
Karen, their only child, graduated from the University of Arizona with a biochemistry degree in 1993, and later earned a graduate degree in computer science from Loyola University in Chicago. She moved back to Arizona after her father was diagnosed with mouth cancer in the early 2000s.
“ For about six years, she took care of both her parents, because her father was in no shape to take care of her mother,” Fields said.“ His cancer spread, but he survived as long as he did in part because of one of the biomedical devices he had patented.”
After her father died, Fields said,“ Karen felt obligated to continue the care he had given her mom.”
For the next 10 years, she was her mother’ s primary caregiver.
Karen and Fields met in 1989 as freshmen, moving into the same dorm in Tucson.
“ Her door was open and I walked in there and started chatting her up, and she was cool with it,” Fields said.“ She wasn’ t looking at me like,‘ Why are you doing this?’ It was an instant,‘ Oh good, I have a friend.’”
The two began an endearing, and enduring, friendship, which included a in Chicago with another friend. Karen brought her mother along and arranged for a caregiver to stay at the hotel with her while the three college friends took in a Chicago Cubs baseball game.
“ I’ m a White Sox fan, but they’ d never been to Wrigley Field, and I was happy to be with them,” Fields said.“ Karen was very vivacious and a very positive light to be around. She wasn’ t a party girl, but she loved to laugh, and she loved to dance.”
Following her mother’ s death, Karen was making plans to travel. Then she got sick.
“ It was tragic. She called me and told me she had Stage 4 colon cancer that had spread to her ovary, and I was like‘ What! What is going on?’” Fields recalled.“ It spread so quickly throughout her body she didn’ t even have time to start treatment. Part of this, too, is that during the time she was taking care of her mother, she didn’ t really take care of herself.”
Less than two weeks after that fateful phone call, Karen Haq was gone. But she had hired an attorney and created the foundation that bears her family’ s name and is dedicated to three causes. One supports scholarships for first-year graduate students in engineering, with preference given to international students, in honor of her father. Another supports animal welfare causes in honor of Karen’ s mother, who loved animals. For her own legacy, Karen wanted to support respite care for family caregivers.
“ It was so important to her to help caregivers,” Fields said,“ and it was important to the board, because of the family’ s heritage, to help people of color. Supporting ACTS2 is more about respite care education than providing respite care, but we felt like it is still the kind of contribution that Karen would like to see.”
By“ we,” Fields means she and the other five members of the Haq Family Foundation’ s board. Three of them met Karen in college; one met her as a schoolgirl and the other is a longtime family friend. All are volunteers and receive no compensation.
Glueckauf and Norton-Brown expressed profound gratitude for the Haq Family Foundation’ s support and“ unswerving commitment to promoting the health and welfare of family caregivers of older adults with dementia,” Glueckauf added.
“ All of us on the board are honored that we have this opportunity to do right by the family,” Fields said.“ Obviously, we miss our friend Karen and her parents, but we’ re here to hopefully do some good. We are happy to support ACTS2.”
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