Lasker, Mary Woodward

(b. 30 November 1900 in Watertown, Wisconsin; d. 21 February 1994 in Greenwich, Connecticut), philanthropist who championed medical research against cancer and heart disease.

Lasker was one of two daughters of Frank Elwin Woodward, a prominent banker, and Sara Johnson Woodward. Her sister, Alice Fordyce, later worked with her in her medical research foundation. Chronic ear infections in Mary’s childhood first aroused her interest in medical issues. She studied art history at the University of Wisconsin and at Radcliffe College, where she graduated in 1923. Woodward also pursued studies at Oxford.

Following seven years as an art dealer at the Reinhardt Galleries in New York City, Woodward changed professions and opened Hollywood Patterns, which sold dress patterns. Out of her work in art came a personal collection that featured works by Miró and Renoir, which she sold in later life to fund her philanthropy.

In 1926 she married Paul Reinhardt. Their childless marriage ended in divorce in 1934, and in 1939 Woodward met Albert Lasker, a retired advertising executive interested in medical research. They were married in June 1940 and had no children. Their joint interest in medical issues led in 1942 to the creation of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, which provided annual awards beginning in 1944 to physicians for pursuing research on major diseases. The Lasker Awards became a major and highly coveted medical prize. During the 1940s the Laskers revitalized the dormant American Cancer Society and used it to lobby Washington for additional research funds.

Albert Lasker died of abdominal cancer in 1952, and his widow became more intensely concerned with medical research during the 1950s. A lifelong Democrat, she used her political contributions shrewdly to establish alliances with such key lawmakers as John Fogarty, an important House member from Rhode Island, and Senator Lister Hill, an Alabaman who chaired the Senate committee overseeing health issues. Her influence was exercised through these political surrogates, whom she called her “Little Lambs,” and her own panels such as the National Health Education Committee. She bombarded legislators with letters and clippings about the money that medical research required, and she recruited skilled operatives such as Michael Gorman to do legwork for her on Capitol Hill. In her statements, she often compared the paltry amount spent on medical issues with the hundreds of millions of dollars Americans spent annually on chewing gum.

At the same time, Lasker also promoted beautification causes. In New York City, she arranged tree plantings along Park Avenue. “Flowers in a city are like lipstick on a woman,” she said. “You have to have some color.” Lasker was a major contributor to Lady Bird Johnson’s campaign to reshape Washington’s appearance in the 1960s. Her money helped underwrite trees and flowers for the First Lady’s work, and the two women forged a productive partnership. But Lasker always maintained that she was primarily interested in medical research.

Her achievements included creation of the National Heart Institute in 1948 during the administration of President Harry Truman, increased funding for the National Institutes of Health in the 1950s, and the establishment of the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Strokes during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. As President John F. Kennedy said, “if you really want to know about what needs to be done in medical research in America, have a talk with Mary Lasker.”

Lasker’s lobbying work culminated in the passage of the legislation that declared a “war on cancer” in 1971. With Republican President Richard Nixon determined to cut funding for the National Institutes of Health, Lasker faced the prospect of serious reductions in her special causes. Lasker had no special access to Nixon and his inner circle, so she turned first to shaping public opinion. She created the Citizens Committee for the Conquest of Cancer in December 1969. The panel ran newspaper ads saying, “Mr. Nixon: You Can Cure Cancer.” To increase the pressure on the president, she turned to Elmer Bobst, head of the drug company Warner Lambert, an old friend of hers and Nixon’s.

A final element of her campaign came when Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts was named chairman of a key health subcommittee in January 1971. Anxious to deny Kennedy the chance to use the cancer issue if he ran for president in 1972, Nixon came out for “an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer” in his 1971 State of the Union speech. When the National Cancer Act stalled in the Senate, Lasker used her friendship with the popular advice columnist Ann Landers to stimulate a flood of mail to senators on behalf of the measure. The National Cancer Act became law in December 1971, and the resulting “war on cancer” was an enduring legacy of Mary Lasker’s political skills.

In her later years, Lasker received numerous honors for her philanthropic work. Congress created the Mary Woodward Lasker Center for Health Research and Education at the National Institutes for Health in 1984. Five years later, she received a congressional gold medal for her work, and President George Bush called her “a woman who has focused an enormous amount of energy on finding solutions to life-threatening diseases.” Lasker continued her activities well into her tenth decade, but she succumbed to heart failure in February 1994. Tributes poured in from the scientific, medical, and political communities. She had been the major public advocate for funding medical research for more than half a century, and she exercised a unique influence on both Congress and the presidency during her heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. As Dr. Michael DeBakey, one of her close associates, put it, “Mary Lasker is an institution unto herself.”

The Mary Lasker Papers are at Columbia University and contain her extensive oral history. Information about her work is also available at the Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson presidential libraries, as well as the Richard Nixon Presidential Papers project. The Richard Neuberger Papers at the University of Oregon, the John Fogarty Papers at Providence College, and the Lister Hill Papers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are invaluable. For general accounts of her life, see Nadine Brozan, “Health Care Lobbyist on a National Scale: Mary Lasker,” New York Times (21 Nov. 1985); and Gary Cohen, “Mary and Her ’Little Lambs’ Launch a War,” U.S. News and World Report (5 Feb. 1996), which looks back to the origins of the war on cancer. For assessments of her career, see Richard A. Rettig, Cancer Crusade: The Story of the National Cancer Act of 1971 (1977); Clarence G. Lasby, “The War on Disease,” in Robert A. Divine, ed., The Johnson Years, vol. 2 (1987); and Lewis L. Gould, Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment (1988). An obituary is in the New York Times (23 Feb. 1994).

Lewis L. Gould