Seeking a cure for MS, sufferer chairs a benefit
Lee Kushner turned her personal struggle into annual concert
, NJJN Staff Writer | 05.22.08

Lee Kushner remembers walking through Central Park with Bette Midler one year, when the singer asked her why she cares so much about Multiple Sclerosis.

	Lee Kushner

Kushner, who chairs an MS benefit year after year at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, told Midler what she tells "everyone."

"Because I have MS," she said.

Kushner, of Livingston, has chaired the annual benefit for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Neurological Institute of New Jersey of UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School since 1998.

But for five years before then, she was reluctant to speak publicly about her own battle with the chronic disease of the central nervous system.

"When I was diagnosed 15 years ago, people didn't speak about it," she said this week.

But Kushner isn't one to feel sorry for herself.

When she was first diagnosed, "Murray nearly fainted," she said of her husband, the attorney and real estate developer. "But I sat and said, 'I'm going to be fine. I'll manage this.' At that time, I didn't know most people end up in wheelchairs and walkers, and people die from MS."

She didn't tell many people. "I didn't want that look, the 'I'm so sorry' look," she said, miming the kind but pitying face of a worried acquaintance.

On a recent Sunday, dressed elegantly in shades of brown and sitting in her kitchen, she shows no signs of the disease. She works out every day, she said, and has been in remission for 12 years. "I'm one of the lucky ones," she said.

Today, she is less fearful about speaking out and just as determined. "I want a cure," she said.

She decided to harness the Kushner family's philanthropic bent, well known in Jewish circles, to help find a cure for MS. She and her husband are prominent philanthropists whose beneficiaries dot the Jewish landscape — from the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and the Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, to United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

She looked no further than her own specialist, Dr. Stuart Cook. A nationally renowned MS researcher and clinician, he is a faculty member of the Department of Neurology and Neurosciences at UMDNJ. He served as president of UMDNJ for six years beginning in 1998.

During an office visit, Lee offered to raise money for research, to which he responded, "Why, Lee, that would be wonderful," she said.

She and Murray endowed two chairs in the neurological group at UMDNJ.

Next, she dreamed up a concert featuring a popular music star, with all proceeds benefiting UMDNJ. The annual Musical Moments for MS concerts launched in 1998, featuring Linda Ronstadt, with Tony Randall as the master of ceremonies and Hillary Rodham Clinton, then first lady, serving as honorary chair. In subsequent years, the likes of Bernadette Peters, Midler, and Donna Summer graced the stage. Over the years, the concerts have raised over $6.5 million for research.

Proceeds went to a specified foundation at UMDNJ, where the money was segregated from regular university funds. But in 2005, the university ran into its well-publicized financial and management scandals. The concerts were suspended that year.

"It became impractical to do any fund-raising with UMDNJ, even though all the money we raised was always in a segregated fund and never commingled with regular university money," said Murray.

This year, the concert returns, featuring Smokey Robinson on June 5 at NJPAC.

The Kushners have paired up with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for the first time, and the event is now being run under that organization's auspices.

The event has already raised $1.3 million this year, and the Kushners are hoping to raise $2 million by June 5.

Meanwhile, as Lee chats with a visitor, she takes every opportunity to discuss something other than the disease, which she calls "depressing." Instead she alternately gushes over her four grown children and her first grandchild, and worries about her husband, who had an ear infection.

"She's the poster child for MS in remission," says Murray.

When she looks forward, she doesn't see wheelchairs and fear.

"I see many grandchildren — God, I hope so," she said.

(For concert tickets, contact via or call 908-781-8418.)

Local stories posted courtesy of the New Jersey Jewish News