A symbol for all people with Parkinson's disease

 I have a dream

I have a dream that the extended Parkinson’s community will come together to rally around a single symbol that will spread awareness of Parkinson’s disease. It will be as recognizable as the pink ribbon is in the fight against breast cancer.

Some will say the red tulip, which is already associated with Parkinson’s is the symbol for PD.  The story of the Parkinson tulip began in 1980 in the Netherlands when J.W.S. Van der Wereld, a Dutch horticulturalist who had Parkinson's Disease, gave the name "Dr. James Parkinson" to the red and white tulip he had developed. You see red tulips in various forms at PD events, and on PD websites. But in the US, there is no standard, agreed upon symbol for Parkinson’s disease.

Of all the tulips I have seen used for PD awareness, one stands apart from the rest. It is a red tulip with leaves shaped like the letters “p” and “d.” People will be reminded about the two million Americans who are living with and fighting this disease every day.

The designer of the PD tulip is Karen Painter, a young onset person with Parkinson’s (PWP) from Washington state. Karen and I met at the 2007 Parkinson’s Action Forum. Shortly after the forum, she sent me an email with this tulip design. I was immediately struck by her unique and beautiful design. And that’s when my dream began.

I wrote a grant which funded the creation of lapel pins based on Karen’s design. To my great delight, the grant was approved, and now we have several thousand PD Tulip lapel pins to give away in Arizona.

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PD Tulip Pin from Karen's design

Karen and I share the dream that this stylized tulip will become the symbol for PD in the U.S. We want it to represent all people with PD and not be associated with any particular PD organization. We would like to see it at every PD event across the nation, no matter who the sponsoring organization is.

So what now?  In the next few months, we will take steps to introduce this PD Tulip to the larger Parkinson's community. I hope you will share in this dream, too.

If you have a PD website or are a support group leader and would like to use Karen's PD tulip design, please email me  (jean @ pdtulip.com) and I'll send you graphics to use. And if you use this design, please send me a photo or a link - and I'll post it for others to see.

view a short video on youtube.

See  examples of the pd tulip design in use.

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