[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 23, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 TRIBUTE TO MARY LASKER--A GREAT AND BELOVED LEADER IN MEDICAL RESEARCH

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the death of Mary Lasker last Monday is a 
great loss to the Nation. She dedicated her life and career to fighting 
disease and promoting medical research and better health care for the 
American people, and what an extraordinary job she did.
  Through her remarkable commitment, she became one of the most 
important, influential, and beloved private citizens in medical 
research in the Nation's history. Millions of persons in this country 
and around the world have benefited from her crusade to conquer disease 
and enhance the quality of health care for all people in all nations.
  When I first came to the Senate, I remember very clearly the advice 
that President Kennedy gave me. ``Have lunch with medical school 
professors, have dinner with Nobel Prize winners, but if you really 
want to know about what needs to be done in medical research in 
America, have a talk with Mary Lasker.''
  Her accomplishments in advancing medical research are legendary. For 
half a century, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation has honored and 
funded many of the world's greatest medical researcher scientists. The 
Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards are known throughout the world, 
and rank very close to the Nobel Prize in international prestige.
  In return for her tireless dedication, Mary Lasker received numerous 
well-deserved awards and honors herself, including the Presidential 
Medal of Freedom, the Nation's highest honor for a private citizen.
  In 1984, she was honored by the establishment of the Mary Woodward 
Lasker Center for Health Education and Research at the National 
Institutes of Health. Indeed, the NIH would not be the world-renowned 
research institute it is today without the brilliant leadership of Mary 
Lasker.
  She never lost sight of her goals or the true importance of her work. 
As she said at the time of the dedication of the Center, in justifying 
the cost of medical research, ``If you think research is expensive, try 
disease.'' And then she said, at the end of her address, ``Thank you 
all for coming to this dedication--now, we must all go and continue our 
work.''
  The advances and discoveries generated by Mary Lasker's genius and 
dedication will continue to improve the lives of generations to come. 
She was an inspiration to all of us who knew her and who had the 
privilege of working with her. She was a symbol of hope to people 
everywhere, and we are saddened by her loss.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the obituary from this 
morning's Boston Globe and a series of other articles on Mary Lasker 
may be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Boston Globe, Feb. 23, 1994]

      Mary W. Lasker, 93; Cofounded Lasker Medical Research Award

                             (By Tom Long)

       Mary (Woodard) Lasker, a philanthropist once described by 
     polio researcher Jonas Salk as ``a match maker between 
     science and society,'' died of heart failure Monday in her 
     home in Greenwich, Conn. She was 93.
       Mrs. Lasker, along with her husband, the late Albert D. 
     Lasker, founded the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and 
     established the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards.
       The Lasker Awards are given to honor medical, biological or 
     clinical work that leads to significant lessening of a major 
     cause of disability or death. Since the Lasker Awards were 
     established in 1944, they have become one of the most 
     prestigious in the medical profession and more than 40 Lasker 
     winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.
       The daughter of a well-to-do banker, Mrs. Lasker was born 
     in Watertown, Wis. She attended the University of Wisconsin 
     and graduated from Radcliffe College where she majored in art 
     history.
       Upon graduation, she moved to New York City, where she sold 
     paintings for gallery owner Paul Reinhardt, whom she married 
     in 1926. The couple divorced in 1934.
       In 1940, she married millionaire Chicago advertising man 
     Albert D. Lasker.
       In a 1965 interview in Time Magazine, Mrs. Lasker recalled 
     that, early in their courtship, when Mr. Lasker asked her 
     what she most wanted to do in life, she responded, ``I want 
     to push the idea of health insurance. Most people can't 
     afford adequate medical care. And I want to help promote 
     research in cancer, tuberculosis and other major diseases.
       Mrs. Lasker persuaded her husband to devote his promotional 
     skill and some of his fortune to public health.
       In the late 1940s, the couple initiated the research 
     program at the American Cancer Society and later turned their 
     attention to increasing financial support of the National 
     Institutes of Health.
       Mr. Lasker died of cancer in 1952 and willed half his 
     estate, estimated in excess of $11 million, to the foundation 
     that bears his name.
       After his death, Mrs. Lasker continued her fight against 
     what she called, ``the major cripplers and killers: heart 
     disease, cancer and stroke.''
       She was a driving force behind the creation of the National 
     Cancer Institute and several other health organizations.
       In a 1974 interview with the New York Times, the soft-
     spoken philanthropist said her campaign for public health was 
     fueled by frustration. ``I'm very good on what we don't know 
     in medicine,'' she said. ``It's not the will of God, it's the 
     dumbness of man, and the lack of enterprise and money that's 
     the problem.
       In 1984, the National Institutes of Health named the Mary 
     Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education in 
     her honor.
       Mrs. Lasker also had a passion for flowers. As early as 
     1943 she began brightening up New York City parks and streets 
     with flowers. In 1956, she instituted the seasonal planting 
     of tulips and daffodils along Park Avenue.
       She was also active in Lady Bird Johnson's efforts to 
     beautify America. In 1965, Mrs. Lasker donated 10,300 azalea 
     bushes and 150 dogwood trees to help brighten Washington, 
     D.C. She also donated 40,000 daffodill plants and several 
     hundred cherry trees to beautify the United Nations in New 
     York City.
       In the interview with Time Magazine, she said. ``I am 
     mainly interested in medical research. The flowers are just a 
     little thing to keep me from being depressed until a cure is 
     found for diseases like cancer and arteriosclerosis.''
       Mrs. Lasker was the recipient of more than 60 awards and 
     medals. In 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented her 
     with the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor for a 
     private citizen. In 1987, Congress authorized the striking of 
     a special gold medal in her honor ``in recognition of her 
     humanitarian contributions in the areas of medical research 
     and education, urban beautification and the fine arts.'' In 
     1992, she was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for 
     Humanitarianism in Philantrophy from Johns Hopkins 
     University.
       Mrs. Lasker remained vigorous throughout her life. Her last 
     public appearance was in October at the 1993 Albert Lasker 
     Awards luncheon in New York City keynoted by First Lady 
     Hillary Rodham Clinton.
       She leaves two stepsons Francis Brody and Edward Lasker, 
     both of Los Angeles.
       Funeral arrangements are private. A memorial service will 
     be held in the spring.
                                  ____


              [From the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation]

Mary Woodard Lasker, Health Crusader and Philanthropist, is Dead at Age 
                                   93

       New York, NY, February 22, 1994.--Mary Woodard Lasker, the 
     indomitable philanthropist who for more than fifty years was 
     a leading national force in promoting biomedical research and 
     better health for Americans died yesterday, February 21, at 
     her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. She was 93.
       Mrs. Lasker died of heart failure, her nephew, James 
     Woodard Fordyce, said.
       Mrs. Lasker created with her husband, the late Albert D. 
     Lasker, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and established 
     the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards as one of science's 
     most prestigious awards. These awards, given for significant 
     achievement in basic and clinical medical research, have long 
     been considered second only in prestige to the Nobel Prizes.
       Mary Lasker believed that ``money could buy ideas'' and 
     that leadership was needed to encourage those who have the 
     stuff of genius to focus their energies on medical research. 
     She sought to encourage and honor discoverers who might 
     otherwise have gone all but unrecognized, and to bring 
     dignity to their work.
       Mrs. Lasker remained vigorous and active throughout her 
     life. Her last public appearance was at the 1993 Albert 
     Lasker Awards luncheon, keynoted by First Lady Hillary 
     Clinton, last October in New York City.
       The Lasker Foundation and its awards program was founded in 
     1944 by the Laskers to draw attention to the major advances 
     in both medical and clinical medical research and to 
     stimulate Federal support for the medical sciences.
       Mrs. Lasker was one of the country's most remarkable women 
     and outstanding citizens. She was a key architect in this 
     nation's cancer initiatives. With a talent for persuasion, 
     she was enormously effective in changing the course of modern 
     science through her catalytic role in obtaining public 
     financial support for medical research.
       Together with her husband in the late 1940s, she initiated 
     the research program of the American Cancer Society and later 
     turned her attention to increasing financial support for the 
     National Institutes of Health, whose budget today exceeds $10 
     billion.
       Dr. Jonas Salk said, ``When I think of Mary Lasker, I think 
     of a matchmaker between science and society.'' Business Week 
     called her the ``fairy Godmother of medical research''. She 
     waged an effective behind the scenes attack on what she 
     called the ``major cripplers and killers''--heart disease, 
     cancer, and stroke in the United States. She was widely 
     regarded as a driving force behind the creation of the 
     National Cancer Institute and of several other of the 
     National Institutes of Health. Her work urging legislation to 
     expand federal cancer research culminated in a 1971 bill that 
     made the conquest of cancer a national goal.
    
    
       In 1984, Mrs. Lasker was honored by the naming of a Center 
     at the National Institutes of Health, the Mary Woodard Lasker 
     Center for Health Research and Education. Her life was a 
     demonstration of how one unelected, unappointed, but highly 
     intelligent and deeply committed private citizen could work 
     with government officials for the benefit of all Americans.
       Medicine was not the only area in which Mary Lasker worked 
     to transform life around her. She had a passion for 
     environmental beautification. As early as 1943 she began 
     brightening New York City's bleak parks and streets with 
     flowers. in 1956 she initiated the seasonal plantings down 
     the center of Park Avenue in New York City and funded the 
     planting of 20 blocks of tulips and daffodils. With her good 
     friend, Lady Bird Johnson, she worked to stimulate interest 
     in the beautification of cities and parks around the country. 
     She generously gave azalea bushes, daffodil bulbs, dogwood 
     trees, and cherry trees both in New York City and in 
     Washington, D.C. to brighten those cityscapes. But she said, 
     ``I am mainly interested in medical research.''
       In 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented her with the 
     Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor for a private 
     citizen. In 1987, the U.S. Senate and the House of 
     Representatives authorized President Bush to strike a special 
     Gold Medal in her honor ``in recognition of her humanitarian 
     contributions in the areas of medical research and education, 
     urban beautification, and the fine arts.'' She used this 
     occasion to urge President Bush to throw his support behind 
     augmenting the national research effort.
       She was the recipient of numerous honors and recognition 
     including the Radcliffe Achievement Award, that college's 
     highest honor. In 1987 she received a Doctor of Humanities 
     Degree from Harvard University and in 1989 the Harvard 
     School of Public Health established the Mary Woodard 
     Lasker Professorship of Health Sciences to perpetuate her 
     life crusade for the discovery of knowledge to promote 
     human health.
       She was the recipient of more than 60 awards and medals, 
     most recently the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for 
     Humanitarianism in Philanthropy from The Johns Hopkins 
     University in 1992. She also served in numerous board and 
     trustee positions for health, cultural and educational 
     organizations.
       Mrs. Lasker, who was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, was the 
     daughter of Frank Elwin and Sara Johnson Woodard. She 
     attended the University of Wisconsin and Radcliffe College 
     where she studied art history and graduated with honors. She 
     also studied at Wadham College, Oxford.
       Her first marriage in 1926 to art gallery owner Paul 
     Reinhardt ended in divorce. In 1940, she married Albert Davis 
     Lasker, the creative and legendary genius of modern 
     advertising. When he retired from his business, Lord & 
     Thomas, the predecessor firm to Foote, Cone, & Belding, Mrs. 
     Lasker persuaded him to divert his promotional genius and 
     some of his fortune to public health and she carried on this 
     passionate work until her death.
       In their life together Mrs. Lasker and her husband amassed 
     an important collection of art which included Renoirs and the 
     works of Matisse, Picasso, Dufy, Chagall and others. Many of 
     these were sold in later years with the proceeds contributed 
     to Mrs. Lasker's philanthropic projects.
       Mrs. Lasker had no children. She is survived by her nephew, 
     James W. Fordyce of Greenwich, and by her step children 
     Francis Brody and Edward Lasker, both of Los Angeles, five 
     step grandchildren, two step great-grandchildren and three 
     great-nephews.
       Funeral rites and burial will be private. A memorial 
     service will be held in the spring. In lieu of flowers, 
     contributions can be sent to the Albert Lasker Medical 
     Research Awards.
                                  ____


                 [From Architectural Digest, Oct. 1985]

                         Profiles: Mary Lasker

                         (By Valentine Lawford)

       Though human beings who fight for causes may eventually 
     achieve heroic stature in the eyes of posterity, they tend by 
     and large to make their contemporaries feel uncomfortable. 
     Mary Lasker of New York is a shining exception to the rule.
       Part of the reason lies in the nature of the causes she 
     champions. Today, medical research and urban beautification 
     are recognizable as two facets of the same unmistakably good 
     cause: the enhancement of human life. But another reason is 
     Mrs. Lasker herself--her combination of forcefulness and 
     warmth of heart, efficiency and charm, public spirit and 
     personal devotion to friends, and her ability to persuade 
     while giving credit where it is due. She is a philanthropist 
     in the most complete sense of the word. Unlike many would-be 
     reformers who start with an impersonal blueprint and end by 
     trying to impose it dogmatically on others, she reasons from 
     the personal to the universal. In short, she is someone with 
     whom it is impossible not to identify and empathize.
       Of her passionate interest in medical research, Mary Lasker 
     says simply: ``I cannot bear to see people suffering from 
     uninvestigated disease. When I was a very young child in 
     Wisconsin, I suffered from all the childhood illnesses. One 
     day I overheard a friend of the family say to my mother, 
     `Sara, I don't think you will ever raise her,' and that made 
     me mad! My grandfather was crippled by arthritis, and both of 
     my parents, who suffered from high blood pressure, eventually 
     died of heart disease. I decided that such things just should 
     not be, and that I would do something myself about it and get 
     others to do something, too.''
       After her marriage in 1940 to advertising pioneer Albert D. 
     Lasker, she began to put her ideas into practice--winning the 
     sympathy and support of influential members of Congress, 
     enlisting the aid of eminent doctors and surgeons and 
     generous private citizens, and stimulating public interest 
     in the fight against disease. In 1942, she and her husband 
     established the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation--backed 
     solely by their own funds--for the promotion of medical 
     research, public health and education, and human welfare. 
     For nearly a half-century, the Lasker Foundation has 
     achieved national and international renown. It has given 
     annual awards since 1944 for outstanding work in medical 
     research and public health administration, and for 
     superior reporting on these subjects. Of the recipients of 
     Lasker Awards in the course of four decades, no less than 
     forty have subsequently received Nobel Prizes.
       In May 1984, Congress passed legislation honoring Mrs. 
     Lasker by naming a new research center at the National 
     Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland after her. 
     Speaking at the dedication ceremony, she said: ``Medical 
     research saves lives and eliminates suffering; it also saves 
     over $13 million in our economy for every dollar invested. If 
     you think research is expensive, try disease.''
       Like her battle against disease, Mrs. Lasker's fight 
     against urban ugliness was inspired by childhood experience. 
     Her mother was instrumental in the establishment of two 
     public parks in Watertown, Wisconsin, where the family lived. 
     It was in memory of her mother that Mary Lasker made her 
     first contribution, in 1942, to the beautification of New 
     York City--a gift of millions of hardy chrysanthemum seeds 
     for massive plantings in five park areas. After Albert 
     Lasker's death in 1952, his widow and her stepchildren gave 
     300 Japanese cherry trees and 40,000 white daffodils in his 
     memory to the gardens of the United Nations. Four years 
     later, Mrs. Lasker donated thousands of daffodils and tulips 
     to be planted along twenty blocks of Park Avenue--partly to 
     demonstrate that they could thrive there, in spite of air 
     pollution. And she has personally contributed 10,000 azalea 
     bushes, 900 cherry trees, 2,500 dogwoods and over a million 
     daffodils to the beautification of Washington, D.C.
       Since 1981, Mary Lasker's horticultural benefactions to New 
     York City have centered on the Park Avenue Malls Planting 
     Project, a community effort to enhance nearly fifty blocks of 
     the avenue with tulip bulbs, annuals and shrubs, Christmas 
     trees, fields of wildflowers, and annually seeded and 
     fertilized lawns. The project's yearly order of 82,000 tulip 
     bulbs from Holland is one of the largest private orders from 
     Dutch bulb growers, second only to the queen of England's. 
     Each spring the tulips burst into bright yellow bloom, and 
     are followed in summer by carpets of begonias--a gardening 
     miracle, given the smoke and heat from the train that runs 
     directly beneath the avenue and the meager two feet of soil 
     in which they are planted.
       It is scarcely surprising that Mary Lasker should have 
     received so many awards and honors, including ten academic 
     degrees, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the cross of 
     Officier de la Legion d'Honneur from the president of the 
     French Republic. She is also a board member of the John F. 
     Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., 
     of the Norton Simon Museum in Los Angeles and of the Leeds 
     Castle Foundation in Great Britain.
       Despite a hectic schedule--she continues as president of 
     the Lasker Foundation and serves as a trustee of several 
     other public-spirited organizations as well--Mary Lasker 
     remains genial and easily approachable. She enjoys parties 
     and has given many notable ones herself. Important French 
     Impressionist works of art were a feature of her former house 
     on Beekman Place, and today she displays a collection of 
     contemporary American paintings in her United Nations Plaza 
     apartment and office. Weekends are spent at her country house 
     in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she can indulge her passion 
     for roses.  She delights in the company of her family, 
     especially of her three great-nephews, the grandsons of 
     her sister and close collaborator, Alice Fordyce. She has 
     taped a series of messages to them, for delivery when they 
     reach a suitable age. An excerpt: ``Go to good colleges 
     and universities. Spend a year or two abroad, at Oxford or 
     in Paris, for example. Become really proficient in at 
     least one foreign language. And to cope with the politics 
     of the twenty-first century, it may be useful to have some 
     familiarity with psychiatry and psychoanalysis.''
       Mrs. Lasker's emphasis on education extends naturally to 
     research, her most effective tool and weapon. Discussing the 
     areas of research she's especially interested in now, she 
     says: ``We need to find a vaccine against cancer, and we have 
     to discover more cancer viruses in order to produce a good 
     vaccine. We must promote more research into diseases of the 
     heart and all neurological diseases in order to prolong human 
     life. We can do almost anything today, work untold wonders as 
     far as mechanical things are concerned, but we do little or 
     nothing to improve human beings. We are just not using our 
     brains!''
       Mary Lasker drives a hard bargain, and the Lasker legend of 
     accomplishment, in all its facets, is widespread. Not long 
     ago, a New York cab driver, taking a European visitor 
     downtown to catch a train, proudly gestured toward the 
     flowers, shrubs and trees along Park Avenue. ``You know who's 
     responsible for all this?'' he asked his fare. ``A lady 
     called Mrs. Mary Lasker. We could do with a lot more of her 
     kind.''
                                  ____


  [From the Journal of the American Medical Association, Oct. 2, 1991]

       The Lasker Awards--Honoring the Spirit of Medical Science

                          (By Dennis L. Breo)

     Beauty is truth,
     Truth beauty.
     That is all ye know on earth,
     And all ye need to know.
                                                      --John Keats
       Keats died in 1821 at the age of 25, a victim of 
     ``consumption'' in the years before medicine fully understood 
     ``contagion'' and knew how to cure tuberculosis. This has 
     next to nothing to do with the subject of this article, the 
     Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards, which were presented 
     in New York on September 27 and which are the focus of two 
     papers in this issue of JAMA.
       Nothing except to note that Mary Lasker, who created the 
     awards and named them in honor of her late husband, has a 
     rare passion for beauty and a rare rage against disease. A 
     mover of mountains to motivate medical research in America, 
     Lasker forced upon others the saving truth that the beauty of 
     science can often cure the ugliness of disease. A woman of 
     both poetry and power, she sold the dream.
       When the history of 20th-century science is written, it may 
     well show that two of the very most important players are a 
     pair of remarkable sisters from tiny Watertown, Wis.--Mary 
     Woodard Lasker, now 90, and her indispensable ally and 
     sibling, Alice Woodard Fordyce, 84. Neither has ever looked 
     into a microscope nor would they recognize what they saw, but 
     their persuasiveness, persistence, and perspicacity have 
     helped cause billions of dollars to be allocated for 
     thousands of researchers to benefit millions of patients.
       Sam Broder, MD, the director of the National Cancer 
     Institute, says, ``The story of Mary Lasker is well known, 
     she has been recognized by essentially everybody, and she has 
     meant essentially everything not only to the National Cancer 
     Institute but to the entire National Institutes of Health. 
     She is a genius who forced the realization that the federal 
     government must commit itself to medical research to benefit 
     all Americans.''
       Broder's predecessor, Vincent T. DeVita, presented Lasker 
     with the NCI's ``Year 2000 Award'' in 1987 and noted, ``Mary 
     Lasker is unique. She is this country's First Lady of science 
     and medicine. In truth, without her efforts, there would be 
     no National Cancer Act, no capacity to approach the cancer 
     problem in any organized way, no capacity to set our goals 
     for the year 2000 . . . no mandate to think of a world 
     without cancer. Like those few people with vision, Mary's 
     eyes have always been able to look farther than they can 
     see.''


                           a seller of dreams

       Mary Woodard was a successful businesswoman in New York in 
     1940 when she met and married Albert Lasker, the father of 
     modern advertising. Himself a genius and the owner of a great 
     fortune, Lasker, like his wife, believed that education and 
     knowledge could change the world. Within 2 years of their 
     marriage, he divested his agency, Lord & Thomas, and joined 
     his wife in a crusade to breathe life--and dollars--into the 
     moribund American Society for the Control of Cancer, as the 
     MD-dominated agency was known in those days, and the National 
     Institutes of Health. Their remarkable success is a tribute 
     to the can do American spirit.
       From the beginning, the awards program, which is 
     administered by the Lasker Foundation, was meant to motivate 
     basic and clinical research against this nation's major 
     cripplers and killers--heart disease, cancer, mental 
     illnesses, respiratory diseases, arthritis, and neurological 
     diseases. Ironically, Lasker himself died of colon cancer in 
     1952.
       The first Albert Lasker Medical Research Award was 
     presented in 1944 to Col. William C. Menninger for his 
     ``outstanding contribution to the advancement of mental 
     health in the field of war psychiatry.'' Subsequent winners 
     have been honored for breakthroughs in everything from making 
     penicillin available to understanding retroviruses.
       Since these awards were established, 49 Lasker Award 
     winners have later won Nobel Prizes. Lewis Thomas, MD, 
     observed in remarks upon the 40th anniversary of the program, 
     ``the average lag [between a researcher winning a Lasker and 
     then a Nobel], if it can respectfully be called that, has 
     been 5 years. The Lasker juries have been prescient.''
       The lion's share of the credit for the awards and what they 
     have meant quite properly goes to Mary Lasker, but Alice 
     Fordyce, the lady who has directed the program and who has 
     handed out the inscribed ``Winged Victory of Samothrace'' 
     statuettes (symbolizing victory against premature death and 
     disability), has also been a driving force, though she 
     insists upon staying in the background.
       Indeed, the two sisters deserve their own Nobel Prize and, 
     perhaps, even a Lasker Award. In 1942, the United States was 
     spending virtually nothing on cancer research--certainly far 
     less than was being spent by Albert Lasker's clients to 
     launch advertising campaigns for toothpaste! Today, the NCI 
     has an annual budget exceeding $1 billion.
       Fordyce agreed to an interview with this reporter to 
     discuss the accomplishments of her sister, but clearly, she 
     too is deserving. Dr. Thomas, himself a Lasker winner as 
     ``the poet laureate of 20th-century medical science,'' once 
     observed of Fordyce: ``Both myself and many other scientists, 
     more stubborn, busier, and with all their own prior 
     engagements, have found it impossible to escape being 
     organized by this lady . . . she is an absolutely 
     irresistible force.''
       Fordyce lives and works in an airy, strikingly appointed 
     and designed apartment in Manhattan's United Nations Plaza. 
     The apartment, which was designed by her late architect 
     husband Allmon Fordyce, commands a panoramic view of the 
     East River and is only a few floors below the dramatic 
     town apartment kept by Mary Lasker, who on this day, does 
     not feel up to an interview.
       The Woodard sisters have come a long way from Watertown, 
     but Fordyce summarizes: ``In those days, a young woman went 
     East to college and then got a job in Manhattan. Things just 
     naturally happened.'' Pointing out the window, Fordyce 
     observes, ``Mary planted those chrysanthemums and flowering 
     cherry trees you see below in honor of our mother, who was a 
     great lover of flowers and beauty.
       The Lasker success story is simple, though profound. The 
     mother imbued her two daughters with a passion for beauty. 
     Mary Lasker, who often says, ``I am opposed to heart attacks 
     and cancer and strokes the way I am opposed to sin,'' has 
     always believed that ``the ugliness of disease is not the 
     will of God,'' (Lasker herself had a major stroke in 1981 but 
     has made a remarkable recovery.) She resolved to persuade 
     others to find the causes of disease, not just treat the 
     symptoms.
       Sara Johnson Woodard, the mother of Mary Lasker and Alice 
     Fordyce, grew up amid the pastoral beauty of Northern Ireland 
     as the 11th of 17 children. She came to the United States in 
     1880 and was appalled by the grime and grit of Chicago.
       Alice Fordyce says, ``Mother rode into Chicago one day on 
     the Rock Island Railroad and burst into tears, exclaiming, 
     `It's just so ugly.''' Later, after she had married prominent 
     banker Frank Woodard and moved to Watertown, Wis., to raise 
     her two daughters, Sara Woodard saw to it that two parks and 
     a public library were established and that many flowers were 
     planted. ``She taught us a love of beauty,'' Fordyce recalls, 
     ``and she also taught us to cause other people to bloom.''
       This would become the great gift of Mary Lasker--to 
     recognize and encourage possibilities in others, especially 
     medical policymakers and researchers. Famed as the ``Great 
     Persuader,'' she became a national resource, like iron and 
     timber. Gifted with a smile that could warm a room and a 
     computer-like ability to track multiple projects, she once 
     moved a scientist to remark that her presence ``caused us all 
     to perk up, as if the sun had just come out.''
       She often said, ``It's a personal world and ideas come from 
     minds in collision. Continents have been discovered, laws 
     passed, buildings built, books written because the right two 
     people met at a party or on a ship.'' The meeting of Mary and 
     Albert Lasker was one such collision, and its shock waves 
     affected Congressmen, Presidents, and the American people. 
     Medical research was the idea she chose to promote. Her 
     determination was deeply rooted in personal experiences.
       Frail and often ill as a child, Mary Lasker suffered from 
     recurrent ear infections and was furious that doctors could 
     not help her. At age 4, she and her mother visited their 
     cleaning woman, who had just had both breasts removed because 
     of cancer. The memory is unforgettable--``that poor woman 
     lying in bed, suffering so terribly, and nothing could be 
     done.''
       Both her parents suffered from hypertension, and the only 
     advice given to them was ``to avoid excitement and stress.'' 
     Later, as an exceedingly popular coed at the University of 
     Wisconsin in Madison, the pretty and talented Mary Woodard 
     and many of her classmates were stricken by the flu epidemic 
     of 1918, an epidemic for which medicine had little to offer. 
     Halfway through her sophomore year, Mary was taken out of 
     school by her mother, who stayed with her in a Midwestern spa 
     until she had regained her health. Once recovered, she 
     switched to Radcliffe, where she graduated cum laude with a 
     degree in art appreciation and history.
       Many years later, in 1943, the Laskers' cook was stricken 
     with cancer and consigned to a ``home for incurables,'' where 
     she eventually died. The doctor would not tell Mary what the 
     problem was, since in those days demons like ``cancer'' and 
     ``mental illness'' were spoken of in whispers. She was told 
     that nothing could be done. Mary Lasker thought to herself, 
     ``Well, that's a fine kettle of fish . . . all we can do is 
     treat the symptoms and send her away. We need to find the 
     cause and to cure it.''


                    Taking cancer out of the closet

       The rest, of course, is richly known history. Dr. Howard 
     Rusk, the former director of the New York University Medical 
     Center's rehabilitation clinic, once said, ``Mary Lasker has 
     done more to promote medical research than any other living 
     person.''
       Mary and Albert Lasker are the ones who, in the 1940s, 
     convinced David Sarnoff, then the powerful head of the Radio 
     Corporation of America, that it was OK to mention the word 
     ``cancer'' on the airwaves. Later, she persuaded the Reader's 
     Digest to run a series of articles on cancers and to include 
     at the end a chance for readers to contribute money for 
     research. This helped launch the fund-raising efforts of the 
     American Cancer Society, and she insisted that 25% of all 
     funds be earmarked for research. Disgruntled doctors at 
     first threatened to resign at this sign of lay influence 
     and at her insistence that the society's board include 
     nonphysicians, but the resistance soon capitulated in the 
     wake of her successful fund-raising. In 1949, she created 
     the Albert Lasker Medical Journalism Awards and helped put 
     medical stories on the front page of the nation's 
     newspapers.
       President John F. Kennedy reportedly once told his brother 
     Edward, then newly elected to the US Senate: ``Have lunch 
     with medical school professors, have dinner with Nobel Prize 
     winners, but if you really want to know about what needs to 
     be done in medical research in America, have a talk with Mary 
     Lasker.''
       Throughout it all, Mary Lasker has walked with Presidents, 
     lived like royalty in elegant country and town homes that 
     showcase art masterpieces and spectacular gardens, and acted 
     as ``Mary Appleseed,'' even persuading the politicians of New 
     York to lay a carpet of daffodils and tulips down the mall in 
     the middle of Park Avenue.
       At 90, she remains excited about the possibility of a 
     vaccine against cancer, a safeguard against the pernicious 
     killer whose 200-plus different forms attack 35 major sites 
     in the body. As usual, she is leaving nothing to chance. She 
     told Cancer News, a publication of the American Cancer 
     Society, ``We're so smart about weapons. We spend billions 
     and billions for weapons to kill people. Why not spend to 
     keep people alive? That's what the American Cancer Society is 
     all about.''
       Alice Fordyce says, ``When I think of Mary, I think of her 
     great charm and intelligence and perseverance and persistence 
     and her great taste. She can thank our Irish mother for much 
     of this. It's true that she was extraordinarily persuasive--a 
     seller of dreams, really--but she also had very good ideas. 
     And they were not selfish ideas. They were ideas to help 
     others.''
       A grateful nation has heaped honors upon Mary Lasker. In 
     1984, Congress named a new center, the Mary Woodard Lasker 
     Center for Health Research and Education at NIH, in her 
     honor. Her countless awards include the Medal of Freedom in 
     1969 from President Lyndon Johnson, a personal friend, and a 
     special Congressional Gold Medal in 1989. She used the latter 
     occasion to prod President George Bush to spend more for 
     health research.
       ``We're Democrats of course,'' Alice Fordyce says, ``and in 
     Democratic administrations, Mary often visited the White 
     House. The Republicans, I sometimes think, are allergic to 
     spending for medical research, and we're fast losing our 
     international leadership in science. It's shocking, and it 
     makes me very cross. The federal budget process is beyond 
     me, but I know that we can do more.''
       Fordyce has served as the executive vice president of the 
     Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, the director of the Lasker 
     Medical Journalism Awards (discontinued in 1970), and the 
     director of the Lasker Medical Research Awards. Dr. Thomas 
     calls her a ``phenomenon . . . a skilled and artistic 
     arranger of flowers and people.'' Indeed, she developed many 
     of these skills during her early career as a public affairs 
     executive for the Rockefeller Center. Among her many bright 
     ideas, she counts suggestions to build the Rainbow Room at 
     the top of the building and the skating pond at the bottom.


                         awards still valuable

       Still, she frets that this article ``must not put me front 
     and center, because I'm not a front-and-center person. Make 
     sure you mention Mike DeBakey, who's been chairman of our 
     jury for 20 years or so and who does a marvelous job. The 
     Lasker Awards are valuable because they're awarded by the 
     researchers' peers. What has always dazzled me is that when 
     the chips are down the jurors vote for scientific merit and 
     not for their favorites.''
       Herself blessed with robust good health, Alice Fordyce 
     still enjoys travel, especially to China, and has recently 
     taken up a new interest--organizing outings to listen to 
     barge chamber music. Hers, too, is a richly lived life.
       She notes that the Lasker Awards were not presented in 
     1990, a development that caused great consternation in the 
     scientific community. ``Well,'' Fordyce says, ``I'm a very 
     unconsulted consultant and I don't know what was going 
     through Mary's mind, but she simply decided that, maybe, we 
     had done enough, that there was no longer a need for the 
     awards.''
       Wrong. ``The outcry from the scientific community was very 
     gratifying,'' Fordyce says. ``Spontaneously, without 
     prompting, many leading scientists called to say, `Mary, you 
     can't do this . . . it's like closing down the Metropolitan 
     Museum of Art' and other comments of this nature. Well, Mary 
     was persuaded, and the awards were resumed.''
       She concludes, ``We're not going to be around forever, of 
     course. I would certainly hope that somebody will keep the 
     awards going in Mary's memory.''
                                  ____


  Address of Mary Lasker at the Dedication of the Mary Woodard Lasker 
 Center for Medical Research and Health Education, National Institutes 
                     of Health, September 19, 1984

       I am deeply honored that this land for research and 
     training is named in my honor, but the real honor goes to the 
     scientists who are dedicating their lives for the benefit of 
     mankind. We will see to it that there are many buildings on 
     this site in the future.
       The reason I am so dedicated to medical research and have 
     lobbied so many Congressman and Senators in this room is that 
     when I was very young, I was sick a great deal and had severe 
     infections of the ears, causing the most agonizing pain. In 
     those days polio was still rampant and there were no 
     antibiotics and no polio vaccines. These discoveries obviated 
     the terrible pain and saved tens of thousands of lives.
       When I was about ten years old I resolved that I would try 
     to do something when I grew up for medical research, and this 
     center named for me symbolizes this early resolve.
       I hope this property and facility and others like it will 
     inspire young people and old to dedicate their lives to the 
     furthering of medical knowledge that will alleviate suffering 
     of people with cancer and other dread diseases.
       Yet our mission and purpose in life unlike any other that I 
     know of has remained non-partisan, due to a large measure by 
     the actions of those here today--and by many who preceeded 
     them in the White House and Congress.
       The press pays little heed to what goes on here, it is 
     slow, grudging but vital work.
       The fruits of all our labors throughout the years will:
       Alleviate pain where there is suffering;
       Provide the freedom to live in health so that we can 
     fulfill our promise and quest in the pursuit of happiness; 
     and
       To provide hope where none existed before.
       This is our mission--we have already begun.
       It is a terrible thing to envision the lives lost, the 
     crippling and the pain occurring while all of us are here.
       Our duty is more urgent today than ever before.
       Economically, our leaders must soon realize that funding 
     for medical research saves lives, and eliminates suffering. 
     It also saves over $13 in our economy for every $1 invested!
       We must all come to the immediate conclusion that if you 
     think research is expensive--try disease.
       In his own wisdom, Senator Magnuson said ``health is the 
     first wealth of a nation''. Without it we have nothing.
       I would add that: with it we have hope and at least the 
     ability to look forward and work toward a better life.
       It is the duty of everyone who receives funding from the 
     NIH to work for and fulfill the goal of medical treatment, 
     cure and prevention and to give this country and the world 
     the benefit of every penny spent.
       It is the obligation of everyone to support this effort and 
     our public leaders so that we can fulfill our mission.
       Do you realize that at least 1,000 people a day die of 
     cancer? With persistent research and substantial financial 
     support, we should be able to further lower the death rate 
     dramatically for all diseases!
       Thank you for your own contributions to this coming victory 
     and for coming to this dedication--now, we must all go and 
     continue our work.

                          ____________________