INSIDE:
A Loving";Tome
Alyn Hospital pays tribute to those who understand caring for children.
SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer
or David and Ilene Techner, being honored by the Detroit Friends of
Alyn Hospital also meant honoring David's longtime friend Debbie
Groner, who died last March.
A special tribute was accepted by Rabbi Irwin and Leypsa Groner, in
memory of their daughter who died this year from myositis ossificans progressiva.
This rare, crippling genetic disorder, diagnosed in childhood, gradually turned her
muscle tissue into bone.
"Debbie's amazing life made Alyn a much more personal mission for me," says
Techner, who last year visited the Jerusalem-based Alyn Woldenberg Family Hospital
and Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center with his wife.
"Debbie had the amazing gift of her parents' love and the opportunities they gave
to her in their home. I saw Alyn as a terrific place for those who don't have the love
she had," says Techner, a funeral director at the Ira Kaufrnan Chapel in Southfield
and a nationally recognized expert on the subject of children and death.
"Debbie demonstrated the power of love — for with her love, she transformed
darkness into light, pain into joy and fear into hope," says her father, Rabbi Groner.
"Is this not the credo of Alyn Hospital?"
An American At Alyn
The Nov. 13 strolling dinner was the 11di annual event for the Detroit chapter of
Alyn Hospital, whose name is an acronym for the Hebrew Agudah Le'ezrat Yehadim
Nachim (Organization to Aid Handicapped Children), and the English "All the Love
You Need."
Keynote speaker for the program, attended by 300 guests at Congregation Shaarey
Zedek, was Roger Lerner, a rabbinical student at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. He spoke of his daughter, Lily, and the rare,
genetic disorder that resulted in disabilities, including those related to respiration,
development and coordination.
"Roger Lerner would not have been able to spend last year studying in Israel as
part of the rabbinics program if there had not been Alyn for his daughter," says West
Bloomfield's Gina Horwitz, president of Detroit Friends ofAlyn. "Alyn got to help
an American child — somebody here at home."
Treated with speech and language, physical, occupational, art, music and hippo-
therapy (therapeutic horseback riding), Lily was able to take advantage of Alyns
multi-disciplinary, all-under-one-roof approach to rehabilitation. "Lily came to Alyn
able to say one or two words at a time — and left, after one year, speaking whole.
sentences," Horwitz says.
Alyn' also provided respite for Lily's mother, Rebecca, while Lerner fulfilled his
HUC-JIR volunteer service requirement working weekly in Alyn's therapeutic
pool, assisting hydro therapists. At the end of the HUC-JIR school year in May,
the family remained in Jerusalem until Alyn's day care program went into sum-
mer recess in August to allow Lily to benefit as long as possible.
ALYN ON PAGE 36
Above: David and Ilene Techner accept their award as Detroit Friends of Alyn
annual honorees from Rabbi Harold Loss of Temple Israel.
Below: Honorees Ilene and David Techner, Detroit Friends of Alyn President
Gina Horwitz and Leypsa and Rabbi Irwin Groner at the Detroit Friends of
Alyn annual dinner.
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