Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III said on Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, revealing a new illness for the retired aircraft pilot whose 2009 landing on the Hudson River turned him into a national figure. He is 75.
The disclosure matters now because Sullenberger is not speaking from the distance of history. He is describing the first signs of a disease that can begin quietly and then take more. He said a name may not come easily, that he sometimes forgets a story he has just told and that he does not sleep as well, even as he said the condition is still in its early stage.
Sullenberger’s name is tied to the Miracle on the Hudson, when he landed a US Airways flight on the Hudson River and saved 155 passengers and crew. That feat later inspired Clint Eastwood’s 2016 film Sully, with Tom Hanks playing him. For years after that landing, he was the public face of calm under pressure. Now he is describing how that same life can be narrowed by memory loss.
He said the shift began about a year ago, when something seemed a bit off with his photographic memory. Lorrie Sullenberger said the disease has done little to blunt his focus or the unflappability that made him famous, adding that he is the same steady person now that he was before the diagnosis. That difference between what he notices in himself and what she sees in him gives the diagnosis its most human edge.
Alzheimer’s disease is incurable and, over time, slows movement, memory and speech. More than 7 million Americans 65 and older are living with it, and Sullenberger’s public disclosure adds another familiar name to a disease that has already drawn recent attention from Danny Glover, who said he has been living with the condition for several years. Sullenberger and Lorrie Sullenberger said they are trying to live each day with hope and joy.
He said this new phase has challenged what it means to be of service after a life that included the U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, accident investigation and work as the U.S. Ambassador to ICAO. What comes next is not a single event but a longer decline, and his own words make clear that he understands he is at the beginning of that journey.
