Local Residents are Tested in Hopes of Saving a Life

By April Koral
POSTED FEBRUARY 1, 2008

At the newly opened center of the JCP (Jewish Community Project) on Duane Street, activities range from preschool programs to Hebrew classes and potluck dinners. Last month, however, the group turned to a higher cause: Trying to save a life.

Lisa Gershowitz Flynn, a JCP member and the mother of two young children, was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in the fall. Rounds of chemotherapy failed to stop the disease’s progression. Her only hope: a bone marrow or stem cell transplant from a matching donor.

Flynn’s good friend, Molly Snyder, another JCP member, turned to Darren Levine, the organization’s executive director, for help.

The next day, Levine sent e-mails to JCP members and other Downtown Jewish organizations, asking that Jews of Eastern European descent come to the center to donate a saliva sample, the first test in finding a match. (Because tissue types are inherited, patients are more likely to match a person from their own ethnicity.)

And so they came, in hopes of helping a woman they had never met. Many were from Tribeca, but others came from elsewhere in the city and beyond.

By 9 a.m., the potential donors had lined up by the dozens at tables staffed by Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation volunteers, ready to present them with swab kits for the DNA samples.

Adam Kies, of Hubert Street, dropped off his child at preschool and stopped by the center before going to work. “I had an aunt who died of leukemia,” he said. “This was easy enough to do and important.”

Stacy Andersen, a former Tribeca resident who now lives in South Orange, N.J., had heard about the drive from her sister-in-law.

“You hate to think you missed the opportunity to help out,” she said. “You wish you could tell everyone about it.”

Each test costs $300 to process. JCP paid $75; the balance was paid by Snyder and Judith Glaser, another friend of Lisa.

The drive was supposed to continue until 6:30 p.m. But by 2 p.m., all 150 of the saliva testing kits were gone.

“After I sent out the letter, I got e-mails all weekend long,” Levine said. A 62-year-old man, he recalled, asked to be tested, even though the cut-off age is 60. Another man, already in the donor bank, wrote that he wanted to give money. “There was a genuine desire to help someone, to make a connection,” Levine said.

A day after the drive, Flynn sent Levine an e-mail from her hospital bed.

“There is no real way to thank someone for volunteering to sponsor, organize, advertise, and/or be tested at a drive aimed at saving my life or the life of someone else in need of a donor,” she wrote.

Flynn said she cried when she read the e-mail that Levine had written urging members to be tested. JCP, she wrote, is not just an organization. It is, she said, “a truly special family.”

For information about The Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, go to www.giftoflife.org.

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