Louis Rhodes, the former director of Arizona’s American Civil Liberties Union, says he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Mr. Rhodes takes a drug that may help manage symptoms and delay the need for a nursing home. He also has volunteered for an Alzheimer’s study.

“I’ll be gone before they get a cure,” he said, “but I want to be one more person who can help doctors obliterate this disease.”

Mr. Rhodes, 56, said his father and grandparents had Alzheimer’s and “the fear was always lurking out there.”

He was hired as Arizona’s ACLU director at age 29 in 1979 after three unsuccessful runs for the state House of Representatives.

Under his direction, the nonprofit ACLU challenged prison conditions for the mentally ill, the use of photo radar and a state agency’s decision to ban interracial adoptions.

After resigning from the ACLU in 1997, Mr. Rhodes got involved with an environmental watchdog group.

In 2000, he took a two-year assignment as community liaison for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in south-central Phoenix and later worked for the governor’s Office of Equal Opportunity.

Now, Mr. Rhodes said he’s “settling down” to a life curtailed by his disease, which was confirmed by doctors earlier this year.

“I’m getting used to staying on the front porch now,” he said. “I sit out there and read every day. Of course, I don’t remember like I used to.” he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. —

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