Captain Sully Opened Up About The Alzheimer’s Signs He Almost Dismissed

Sep 25, 2026 by apost team

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger had been used to staying calm when the unexpected happened. But years after becoming a household name for saving 155 lives in a dramatic emergency landing, the retired pilot was facing a very different kind of challenge.

Sullenberger, 75, had been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease in August 2025.

Sullenberger had first revealed his diagnosis publicly in July, explaining at the time that he sometimes struggled to retrieve a name, forgot stories he had recently told and was not sleeping as well. He had described himself as being at the beginning of a “long journey.”

The diagnosis had not been easy for him or his wife, Lorrie, to process.

“We felt all those emotions: the shock, the anger, ‘Why me?’” Sullenberger said.

Initially, he and Lorrie had considered keeping the diagnosis private. But Lorrie eventually encouraged her husband to talk about it openly, telling Roberts that Alzheimer’s was a disease, “not a character flaw.” They hoped that sharing their experience could encourage other families to step forward rather than face the disease in isolation.

Sullenberger had also begun receiving monthly infusion treatments as he navigated the early stages of the disease.

He later opened up about the first signs he noticed, how Lorrie supported him, and why he hoped speaking publicly could help other families feel less alone.

The initial symptoms had been surprisingly subtle.

“One of the first things I noticed was that it was harder and harder to remember people’s names, even people we knew,” Sullenberger told Robin Roberts during an interview on “Good Morning America.” He also noticed that he was forgetting things he normally would not and repeating himself without realizing he had already told the same story.

He had also found himself relying more heavily on his calendar to keep track of his commitments.

For Lorrie, those early changes had been easy to dismiss. She explained that many people associated Alzheimer’s with more advanced symptoms, which made the smaller changes that happened at the beginning much harder to recognize.

Her advice had been to pay attention to what was unusual for a particular person rather than waiting for more obvious signs.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, the legendary pilot had approached the uncertainty with the same methodical mindset that had helped him through the “Miracle on the Hudson.”

On Jan. 15, 2009, a bird strike had disabled both engines of US Airways Flight 1549 shortly after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Sullenberger and first officer Jeff Skiles had successfully landed the Airbus A320 on the Hudson River, with all 155 people aboard surviving.

Looking back on that emergency, Sullenberger said he had needed to devise a plan, execute it perfectly and focus on saving every life in just 208 seconds.

Now, he was taking a similar approach to Alzheimer’s: concentrating on the highest-priority things and refusing to waste energy on distractions.

“I’ve gone through harder things than this before,” he told Roberts.

For Sullenberger, speaking out had become another form of service. And just as the “Miracle on the Hudson” had given people hope years earlier, he and Lorrie hoped sharing their experience could offer hope to families confronting Alzheimer’s themselves.

apost.com

What are your thoughts on Captain Sully’s health struggles? Do you relate to what he and his wife are dealing with at the moment? Let us know, then pass this on to friends and family who understand the challenges of caring for loved ones.