Mary Lasker

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Mary Woodard Lasker (1900-1994) was an American health activist. She worked to raise funds for medical research, and founded the Lasker Foundation. Mary Lasker is a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.

She was married to Albert Lasker. One of the Lasker Awards was named in her honour Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service in 2000.

[edit] "A White House Diary."

Lady Bird Johnson writes about Mary Lasker numerous times in her book "A White House Diary."

On page 56, Mrs. Johnson writes "We went on to Mary Lasker's for lunch in her charming house, which is like a setting for jewels--her pictures are the jewels. Mary graciously and kindly offered to let me have something from her own house for the White House----Of all the lovely things in her house, to me almost the loveliest is the scene from her living room window, which looks out over the East River with the boats plyimg their way up and down the grey stretches of that magic city."

On page 582, "We drove to Columbia Island. Mary Lasker has given eight hundred thousand daffodil bulbs to be planted there in natural drifts along the banks of the Potomac-----".

On page 254, Mrs. Johnson relates Mary Lasker's gift of 9,300 azalea bushes, flowering dogwood and other plants to put along Pennsylvania Avenue.

[edit] See also

• Lasker Award - given out by the Foundation

[edit] External links

• Notable New Yorkers - Mary Lasker Biography, photographs, and interviews of Mary Lasker from the Notable New Yorkers collection of the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University.