On International Women’s Day, I nominate Sylvia Lawry, who founded the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in 1947.
Founder Sylvia Lawry | National Multiple
Sclerosis Society (nationalmssociety.org)
Sylvia Lawry, who single-handedly launched an
international war on multiple sclerosis, founding both the National Multiple Sclerosis
Society in the United States and the Multiple Sclerosis International
Federation abroad, and who profoundly influenced research, disease management,
and public policy concerning this complex neurological disease, died February
24, 2001, in New York City. Ms. Lawry was 85 and lived in Manhattan.
“The death of Sylvia Lawry was a tremendous
loss to our organization and to the MS movement. Sylvia’s legacy will continue
to inspire all of us who knew, or even knew of, her as we move closer each day
to a world free of multiple sclerosis,” pledged Joyce Nelson, former President
and CEO of the National MS Society.
“Sylvia Lawry was a private no-nonsense person
to whom you couldn’t say ‘no,”‘ shares Weyman Johnson, former chairman,
National MS Society, board of directors. “She devoted more than 50 years of her
life seeking the means to end MS and was a hero to anyone touched by the
challenges of the disease.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1915, one of four children
of Jacob and Sophie Friedman, Sylvia Lawry was attending Hunter College with
the aim of becoming a lawyer when her younger brother Bernard began
experiencing visual and balance problems. They proved to be early symptoms of
MS, an unpredictable, chronic, and often disabling disease of the central
nervous system. For several years, the family pursued cures without success,
ultimately leading Ms. Lawry to place a small classified notice in The New York
Times in 1945: “Multiple Sclerosis. Will anyone recovered from it please
communicate with patient.”
When the more than 50 replies she received
were from individuals as desperate as she to find encouraging news about MS,
Sylvia Lawry realized the need for an organized effort to stimulate and finance
research into the cure, treatment, and cause of multiple sclerosis. The result
was that on March 11, 1946, Ms. Lawry, a lone young woman, gathered 20 of the
nation’s most prominent research scientists and founded what would become the
National Multiple Sclerosis Society. From these humble beginnings, Ms. Lawry
devoted the rest of her life to the pursuit of a world free of MS.
Initially incorporated in 1946 as the
Association for Advancement of Research in Multiple Sclerosis with the sole
purpose of sponsoring MS research, the organization was renamed as the National
Multiple Sclerosis Society in 1947. This was in recognition of the fact that
people affected by the disease, both patients and their families, desperately
needed information and other service programs to enhance their lives while the
cure was being sought. That year also, the first two local chapters of the
Society were chartered in California and Connecticut.
Though Bernard’s health continued to weaken,
and he ultimately succumbed to MS-related causes in 1973, Sylvia Lawry saw
there were millions of others like her brother who needed help. With the
assistance of Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, whose daughter had MS,
Ms. Lawry personally lobbied Congress and persuaded them to adopt legislation
on August 15, 1950, establishing what is now the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Up to this time, government interest
in MS was minimal with research expenditures totaling approximately $14,000.
Since then, government appropriations to the Institute have steadily increased,
until today they have passed the $1.5 billion mark, approximately $110 million
which directly impacts multiple sclerosis.
In the same era, chapters of the Society were
established across the country to better serve people with MS and their
families. Diverse education, counseling, self-help, equipment loan, advocacy,
and referral programs were introduced with the help of dedicated volunteers and
grassroots event-based fundraising.
In 1967, spurred by the fact that at that time
almost one-third of the Society’s research funds were being awarded to
investigators outside the U.S., Ms. Lawry founded the MSIF (Multiple Sclerosis
International Federation). The federation helped coordinate fundraising and
service efforts of young societies in Canada, Britain, France, Germany, and
other European countries, modeled on the American original. The federation
became a catalyst for the global MS movement in Latin America, Japan,
Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Eastern Europe. Today there are 43 member
societies around the world. The MSIF is headquartered in London.
Ms. Lawry served as Executive Director of the
National MS Society until 1982 and maintained her role as Secretary of the
Multiple Sclerosis International Federation until 1997, when she “retired.” She
continued to be an officer of the National Board and was a full-time volunteer,
devoting her efforts to the Society’s international programs and typically
working a 12-hour day. “I’ll retire when MS retires,” she promised just a few
months before respiratory illness ended her regular presence at the Society’s
home office in Manhattan. She did continue to work from her home with
colleagues worldwide and a book on her life and the history of the Society was
just completed when she was hospitalized in February 2000.
Sylvia Lawry fiercely pursued her dream of a
world free of MS for more than a half century. Though her vision of a cure for
MS is not yet a reality, the National MS Society which she founded has devoted
more than $600 million to MS research since 1946--playing a seminal part in
developing understanding of the central nervous and immune systems, the two
most complex systems in the human body.
Ms. Lawry’s commitment to research has also
led the Society to become instrumental in the development of many of the
FDA-approved medications that can reduce the number of acute MS attacks,
protect the central nervous system from damage and delay the onset of more
permanent disabilities.
The hard work of one young woman has resulted
in an organization that today has a 50-state network of chapters expending
nearly $126 million a year to serve over one million people and which devotes
more than $46 million each year to support over 440 research projects
internationally. The Society’s web site receives nearly two million visitors
each month (www.nationalMSsociety.org); provides a toll-free telephone number
that connects callers to their nearest local office (1.800.344.4867); and
publishes an award-winning quarterly magazine Momentum, which has a readership
of over one million. The Society also offers educational programs to
health-care professionals and organizes state and national advocacy campaigns
to address issues impacting people with disabilities.
Ms. Lawry was a widow and was survived by her
two sons Steven and Frank Englander; her sister Lillian Wilson; and her two
grandchildren Matthew and Marissa. The biography on Ms. Lawry’s life and its
impact on the MS movement, Courage, was published in October 2003 by the firm
Ivan R. Dee.
Please direct contributions in her memory to the National MS
Society or the MS International Federation, 733 Third Avenue, New York, NY
10017.
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