[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13713-13714]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   TRIBUTE TO NATALIE DAVIS SPINGARN

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, on June 6, 2000. we lost a very 
courageous, brilliant, and dedicated American, Natalie Davis Spingarn. 
A noted writer, public servant, and leading advocate for cancer 
patients, Natalie was also a good friend who I miss greatly. She 
suffered many health problems over the years, but she lived her life 
with purpose, grace, and humor. Natalie built on her own experience as 
a cancer patient to lead the cancer survivor movement and to work for 
improved care and services for cancer patients.
  I met Natalie in 1963, when she was the press secretary for the late 
Senator Abraham Ribicoff and I was a summer intern. Natalie made a 
great impression on me then and, quite a few years later, Natalie 
served as a senior intern in my Senate office where she contributed her 
wealth of experience and knowledge to my efforts in the area of health 
policy. Natalie was a trusted adviser, who endeared herself to my staff 
and me with her wisdom, energy, compassion, and wit.
  Mr. President, I would like to call the attention of my colleagues to 
a wonderful article about Natalie Spingarn that appeared on June 7 in 
The Washington Post. Natalie was a frequent contributor to the Health 
section of the Post, and I know she would be proud to see Bart Barnes' 
tribute reprinted in the Congressional Record.
  The tribute follows:

                   Author Natalie Davis Spingarn Dies

                            (By Bart Barnes)

       Natalie Davis Spingarn, 78, an author and former federal 
     official who for 26 years had

[[Page 13714]]

     written books and articles about her recurring bouts with 
     cancer, died of pancreatic cancer June 6 at the Washington 
     Home Hospice.
       Mrs. Spingarn, who initially was diagnosed with metastatic 
     breast cancer in 1974, was a leader in the cancer 
     survivorship movement, a writer on health care policy and a 
     patients' advocate with cancer patient support organizations.
       Her writings included a 1988 ``Cancer Patient's Bill of 
     Rights,'' ``Hanging in There: Living Well on Borrowed Time'' 
     and ``The New Cancer Survivors: Living With Grace, Fighting 
     With Spirit,'' which was published by John Hopkins University 
     Press last year.
       ``The biopsy is positive. You have cancer,'' she wrote in 
     ``The New Cancer Survivors,'' commencing her account of the 
     experience shared by an estimated 8.2 million Americans who 
     have a history of cancer.
       ``Spingarn distills the diversity of the cancer survivor 
     experience, finding the commonality among them,'' wrote 
     Frances M. Cisco, a 12-year survivor of breast cancer and the 
     president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, in an 
     April 18 review of Mrs. Spingarn's book published in The 
     Washington Post. ``With compassion, insight and occasional 
     humor, Spingarn pulls the reader into the world of what she 
     terms `the new breed of cancer survivors.' These are not 
     passion victims but confident individuals, ready to speak up 
     to seek out what they need to lead quality lives.''
       Mrs. Spingarn, a former staff assistant to Abraham A. 
     Ribicoff, both during is tenure as secretary of health, 
     education and welfare and as a Democratic senator from 
     Connecticut, was an officer of the War on Poverty in th late 
     1960's and early 1970's. She was also a freelance writer who 
     had written articles for The Washington Post and other 
     organizations.
       She was active in Democratic Party politics and had been a 
     D.C. delegate to two Democratic National Conventions. During 
     the 19689 presidential campaign of Hubert H. Humphrey, she 
     traveled with the vice president as a speech writer.
       Mrs. Spingarn, a resident of Washington, was born in New 
     York and graduated from Vassar College. She began her 
     professional career as a reporter on the New York newspaper 
     PM shortly after college, then came to Washington with her 
     husband after World War II.
       She joined Ribicoff as his executive assistant at HEW in 
     1961 and remained with him after his 1962 election to the 
     Senate. In 1967, she returned to HEW as assistant director 
     for communications and training at the center for community 
     planning, which was established to coordinate urban efforts 
     in the War on Poverty. She remained on that job through the 
     early 1970s. Later, she was a public affairs assistant at the 
     Department of Education and a D.C. General Hospital 
     commissioner. She was a White House volunteer in the Clinton 
     administration.
       In the years after her breast cancer was diagnosed in 1974, 
     Mrs. Spingarn wrote increasingly about issues related to 
     cancer treatment and care. She reviewed several books on 
     health care for the Health section of The Washington Post, 
     and she wrote first-person accounts about her own treatment 
     and care.
       She had a family history replete with cancer. Her 
     grandmother died of cancer. Both her sisters had breast 
     cancer, and one died of pancreatic cancer. A son survived a 
     bout with lymphoma.
       In 1977 and 1979, Mrs. Spingarn experienced new diagnoses 
     of cancer.
       ``In my work, I write usually about health policy matters. 
     . . . In my life I am a patient, a role which takes time--too 
     much time,'' she wrote in The Washington Post in 1980. ``I am 
     living still in my Washington hospital bed. . . . A nurse 
     comes in to check on me. . . . `What's the matter with you?' 
     she wants to know . . . my disease seems to her my fault. She 
     makes no move toward me, even to inquire if I need anything, 
     and observes that I should have talked to the doctor about 
     avoiding its spread . . .''
       In 1981, she wrote about her search for a holistic means of 
     dealing with cancer. ``I had flirted with the idea that my 
     emotions might affect my cancer pain during a period a few 
     years ago when I suffered especially nagging backaches. I had 
     discarded clumsy back brace, which made me sweat and my 
     clothes balloon. Doctors and a pain clinic had only given me 
     more pills . . . the latest had made my hands tremble.''
       In the ensuing years, Mrs. Spingarn would write of needs 
     for long-term care and increased mental health services for 
     cancer patients, rules and regulations that often appeared to 
     be contradictory and cause unnecessary hardship, and waste, 
     fraud and inefficiency that many patients routinely 
     encounter.
       She won an award at the John Muir Medical Film Festival for 
     a film, ``Patients and Doctors: Communication Is a Two-Way 
     Street,'' and she served on the boards of the National 
     Coalition for Cancer Survivorship and the International 
     Alliance of Patient Organizations.
       Survivors include her husband, Jerome Spingarn of 
     Washington; two sons, Jonathan Spingarn of Atlanta and Jeremy 
     Spingarn of Norwood, Mass.; a brother; a sister; and two 
     grandchildren.

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