Stayin' Alive With Heart Disease

The first Baby Boomer fights a family curse -- and her generation's No. 1 killer.

The Baby Boomers

At 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving 1983, the ringing phone startled Kathleen Casey awake at her suburban home in Voorhees, New Jersey. She grabbed the receiver on her bedside table and heard her brother-in-law, Jack Reilly, in Virginia on the line. "Your sister had a heart attack," he said. "An ambulance took her to the hospital." Kathy couldn't believe it. Ann Marie was just 36, a year and a half younger than Kathy. Yeah, her sister was a former smoker, and heart disease ran in their family. But surely she was too young for heart problems, Kathy thought.

Ann Marie, Jack and their three children had been planning to make the trip to Kathy's house for the family dinner. Instead, Kathy and her two daughters, Beth, 15, and Jennifer, 13, drove three hours to Burke, Virginia, to be by Ann Marie's side. All the while, Kathy couldn't shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong, that the family curse had struck again. Few members of her immediate family had made it out of their 60s. And now Ann Marie's attack made one thing frighteningly clear: The disease was continuing its assault on generations of Caseys at an increasingly younger age. It was hard to tear her thoughts from her sister, yet Kathy couldn't help wondering whether she herself might be the next victim.

Kathleen Casey's destiny had already been set in motion. She was born in Philadelphia one second after midnight on January 1, 1946, making her the first documented Baby Boomer. That demographic phenomenon boosted the country's population by 76 million by the time it ended in 1964, and became a consumer juggernaut for cultural and economic change in America.

Kathy was mentioned in a book about Boomers, written by Landon Y. Jones, a former editor of People, and has been featured on TV and in magazines as an unofficial poster child of her generation, known for its can-do attitude and tendency toward excess. Now, as millions of Boomers enter their 50s and 60s, an increased risk of heart disease is another trait many of them have in common.

Kathy didn't know what heart disease was while growing up, even though it surrounded her. As a girl, she noticed something different about her maternal grandfather, James Carr, a bottling company owner who had lost it all after the Great Depression. Once active and lighthearted, he seemed to age before her eyes. His face would turn bright red if he got even a little upset. At some point, he had a mild heart attack, then eventually suffered a major one and died.

Some years later, Kathy's paternal grandparents also succumbed to heart-related problems. "In those days, people died from heart attacks all the time," Kathy says. "It was very matter-of-fact, something you just accepted."

• • Get Motivated
• • Anti-Aging
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• Heart Disease

• Warning Signs of Heart Disease
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• Genetic Heart Disease Factors
• Know your inborn risks to better manage cholesterol.
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• Stress: A Heart Disease Risk Factor on a Par With Smoking
• An underlying problem that can have severe physical consequences.
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• The Stages of Heart Disease
• How cholesterol wreaks havoc in your body.
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• Reduce the possibility of a heart attack with lifestyle modifications.
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• Your Heart Disease Prevention Plan
• Lower your risk for the number one killer of Americans.
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