Lawrence community members are coming together to bring Wanda Dyer home. She’s late to celebrate her 46th wedding anniversary.
Dave Dyer, Wanda’s husband, said Lawrence police have told him to wait at the couple’s home in case she shows up there. He doesn’t get out much anyway because he has a form of leukemia that renders him helpless against disease, he said.
Wanda, 74, came from the east side of Kansas City, where her mother taught special education.
Wanda fell in love with libraries while she working on her degree at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. She worked at the Kansas City Public Library before working for 30 years in KU’s Watson Library’s cataloguing department, Dave said.
“We’ve got a house full of books to prove it over here,” he said.
She’s slight, at 5-foot-2 and 117 pounds. She’s stayed in good shape, and she loves to walk, Dave said.
But “She’s suffering from dementia. It’s suddenly gotten a lot worse over the last couple of months,” Dave said. “… It’s turned into a horror show.”
Wanda went missing for a few hours back in February, but it turned out that she was staying the night at their daughter’s house, Dave said.
If you see Wanda
Anyone with information on Wanda Dyer’s location should call dispatch immediately:
785-843-0250.
Nowadays, Wanda often loses her pocketbook, Dave said, so their daughter holds onto it for her. When Wanda went to the bank Friday morning with no ID or debit card, the bank wouldn’t give her any money, he said. Later that day, she was seen on East 1500 Road, walking toward Eudora.
She was seen on Saturday, Dave thinks, near the Pallet village on North Michigan Street, and later she was reported to be at a bus stop near 23rd and Louisiana streets.
Neighbors saw her around noon on Sunday, sitting about 50 feet away from the couple’s apartment near Fifth and California streets, Dave said.
“I thought I told all the neighbors about it, I was pretty sure I had, but evidently they didn’t understand what I was saying,” he said. The neighbors hadn’t put 2 and 2 together, so they didn’t tell him or call police.
“I have been told that they (people with dementia) might recognize, you know, something familiar about the neighborhood, but they don’t know exactly what or where to go,” he said. “… She’s obviously extremely confused. I can’t imagine her suffering she’s going through. It’s got to be terrible.”
Dave said Wanda may have been seen arguing with two men in front of Chipotle in downtown Lawrence two or three days ago. Previously, that would’ve been out of character for her.
“She’s a very quiet, very nice person,” Dave said. “But with this dementia, they tell me, and I’ve experienced myself, she can have moods of extreme anger.”
Some reported sightings may not have been Wanda, he said — he knows there are “a lot of people wandering around, suffering different problems.” But he hopes they are.
Dave said he’s been impressed with how hard police have been working to find Wanda. In addition, he said his friend, Rochelle Edwards, has come from out of town to look for Wanda — all day Saturday and Sunday, and after work on weekday evenings.
“They came looking after they worked all day, searched the areas all around Lawrence and in Lawrence,” he said of Edwards and her husband. “They’re amazing people.”
Edwards has formed a Facebook group that is rapidly growing — up to more than 200 people since she launched it Thursday morning.
Edwards and others are working to coordinate search parties with EquuSearch Midwest, a group of volunteer specialists who work with law enforcement to find missing people.
“We just want to find her. She has been missing way too long,” Edwards said.
To find the latest info on how to help and when search parties will be organized, see the Facebook group, “Bring Wanda home.”
One search party is planned to begin at 8 a.m. Sunday, March 30 at Centennial Park, meeting at the west picnic shelter — the one closest to the rocket ship.
If anyone sees Wanda, Dave would ask them to call police immediately. Anyone with information on Wanda’s location can call dispatch at 785-843-0250.
Their 46th wedding anniversary was earlier this week, and Dave will be ready to celebrate with Wanda whenever she gets home.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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