Sylvia Lawry; Founded MS Society, Spurred by Her Brother’s Illness
She started it all with 11 words.
“Multiple sclerosis. Will anyone recovered from it please communicate with patient,” Sylvia Lawry stated in 1945 in a tiny ad in the New York Times.
She was not the patient. Her brother was. But out of concern for his suffering, Lawry placed the ad, receiving about 50 replies from other patients--not with remedies, but seeking a remedy themselves.
Within a year, she enlisted 20 scientists and more than 8,000 concerned people to found the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The organization, whose first two chapters were established in California and Connecticut, continues to raise funds for research to find possible causes and cures, and provide support for patients and their families.
Prompted by inquiries from other countries, Lawry also founded the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies in 1967.
Lawry, who served as executive director of the National MS Society until 1982 and was secretary of the international group until 1997, died Saturday in a New York hospital, where she had been treated for heart and respiratory disease. She was 85 and lived in Manhattan.
She remained a board member and the No. 1 MS volunteer almost until her death.
“I can’t retire,” she frequently said, “until the disease is retired.”
Working with U.S. Sen. Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, whose daughter had the disease, Lawry helped persuade Congress in 1950 to establish the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke within the National Institutes of Health.
Before that legislation, the U.S. government had spent about $14,000 for research on the mysterious, often crippling disease. Because of the 1950 law, more than $100 million in public funds has been devoted to studying and finding cures for the disease.
Lawry also coined the nickname “MS.” “Multiple sclerosis literally means ‘many hardenings’ in the central nervous system,” she told The Times in 1953 when she appeared at the Ambassador Hotel to recruit support. “It’s like the wearing away of the insulation of an electric wire, causing a short-circuit so that the nerve impulses are not activated.”
Some of the earliest funds raised by her group were given to UCLA Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Hospital and Rancho Los Amigos Hospital for diagnosis and assistance to MS patients. By 1953, about 250,000 people nationwide were believed to have MS, 5,000 of them in Southern California.
The National MS Society estimates that one in 1,000 people develops the disease, with symptoms ranging from numbness and paralysis to blurred vision and blindness. Multiple sclerosis normally strikes young adults between the ages 18 to 45. Research has provided treatment that helps most patients realize their normal life span, but the exact cause and a definite cure are still being sought.
“We have seen the power that an aroused public can wield in combating a disease such as polio. We can be confident with such support, it is just a matter of time before we find means of controlling MS, AIDS or any disease,” Lawry said in 1987, the year she received the Presidential Volunteer Action award in a ceremony at the White House.
Today, Lawry’s society has raised and allotted more than $300 million to research, leading in part to development of three prescription medications (Avonex, Betaseron and Copaxone) which help reduce the severity of MS. The society, with 135 chapters throughout the country, provides about $30 million a year to more than 300 research projects and aids more than a million MS victims annually.
Lawry’s biography detailing her more than half-century assault on multiple sclerosis, written by National MS Society President Mike Dugan, is scheduled for publication next fall.
Born Sylvia Friedman in Brooklyn, Lawry graduated from Hunter College and was hoping to become an attorney when her younger brother was stricken with MS. He died in 1973 but, once aroused, her devotion to the cause never wavered.
She married Michael Lawry in 1944 and, even though they were divorced shortly before she founded the MS Society, she continued to use that name for the rest of her life. She married Stanley Englander in 1957, and had been a widow since his death in 1968.
Lawry is survived by two sons, Stephen and Frank Englander; one sister, Lillian Wilson; and two grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made either to the National MS Society or to the International Federation of MS Societies, both at 733 3rd Ave., New York, NY 10017.
