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INSIDE:

food

NFTY Elects

Young Activist

130

health

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Turbulent Soul
Opens His Heart . . . 134

travel

ALS event strives to raise funds and awareness.

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
StailWriter

B

efore Jody Rogow and Lisa
Rosenberg ever heard the
motto of May's "National
ALS Awareness Month,"
they had already achieved its goals.
The theme, "Get involved. Make a
difference. Give a reason for hope,"
encompasses their ongoing objectives.
With personal reasons to embrace the
organization, the two met through a
friend who knew each of their fathers
had been diagnosed with the disease.
Rogow and Rosenberg have been work-
ing together to fimdraise and increase
awareness for ALS ever since.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),
also called Lou Gehrig's disease after the
famous baseball player, is a progressive,
fatal, neurological disease. It is caused
when nerve cells in the brain and spinal
cord that control voluntary movement
gradually degenerate, causing muscles to

weaken and leading to paralysis.
Striking in midlife, ALS is about
one-and-a-half times more likely to
occur in men.
"My father Jerry Klask was diag-
nosed with ALS at the age of 65 in late
1997," says Rogow. "My family and I
didn't know much about the disease
other than it was fatal." A practicing
attorney with an active lifestyle, Klask's
condition rapidly worsened. He spent
much of his last year in Florida, with
family visiting often.
As time went, Rogow learned two
things about the disease: it was not
receiving the public awareness and
research it deserved, and it was not as
rare as she thought. "I started hearing
about so many other people with
ALS," she says, including Sanford
Roth; Ros. enberg's father.
Rogow and Rosenberg met just
after Jerry Klask passed away in
February 1999. "We talked about our-
selves and our fathers and found some
incredible similarities," says Rogow.
The two live a mile apart in West
Bloomfield, and are both attorneys
with fathers whom she describes as
great family men, trial attorneys and
contemporaries.
Most significantly for them, "We
both had incredible, special relation-
ships with our fathers, were inspired to
follow their career paths and get law
degrees, and so enjoyed practicing law
with our fathers," says Rogow.
When the two women met, Rogow
and her husband Barry were in the
midst of planning a fundraiser for ALS
of Michigan for May 1999. Rosenberg

joined in by including her friends and
family in the 250 guests attending the
dinner/art auction. The event sold 150
pieces of art, and raised $25,000.
An event on Saturday, May 13,
sponsored by Homedics Inc., will take
place at the Parthenon House in West
Bloomfield. The second annual Art
Auction Gala, hosted by Jody and
Barry Rogow and Lisa and Mark
Rosenberg, is titled, "A chance to Turn
Hope into Reality."
"Creating awareness is like creating
money and that's what will make a dif-
ference," says Rosenberg.
Sue Burstein-Kahn, ALS of Michigan
executive director, says, "ALS is not as
rare as people think" Affecting six to
eight of every 100,000 people, she says it
is as common as multiple sclerosis (MS).
"But most forms of MS are not fatal,"
she adds. "Our population has a life-
span of two to five years after diagnosis,
so there are not as many people with it
at one time, but the chances of getting it
are the same."
About 1,200 residents of Michigan
and 30,000 Americans have ALS. "Of
everyone alive now, 300,000 will be
diagnosed with ALS," says Burstein-
Kahn.
Rogow and Rosenberg became mem-
bers of the board of ALS of Michigan
last fall. They hope to attend a May con-
ference in Washington, D.C., for the
National ALS Advocacy Day and ALS
Leadership Development, visiting elected
representatives to advocate for ALS-spe-
cific legislation and additional funding
for ALS from the National Institutes of
Health.

tIN

5/12
2000

127