It's a personal cause. The disease killed his wife Colleen in 2009 and is beginning to affect him.
"He's a little bit worse than last year, but pretty close to about the same," son Marty says. "He just loses a little bit more, grasping for words.
"The worst part of this disease is there's nothing you can do about it."
The Howe family hasn't chased a diagnosis of exactly what kind of dementia Gordie has. They did that with Colleen, who died at 76 of Pick's disease. Pick's is a rare form of dementia marked by changes in mood, behaviour and personality, followed by memory loss similar to that experienced in Alzheimer's.