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Ross had been with the association since 1955. He joined the
national voluntary health organization as its public information
director and was named executive director in 1962.
The Muscular Dystrophy Association, which has its national
headquarters in Tucson, fights more than 40 neuromuscular diseases
through programs of services, research and health education.
Ross became an MDA vice president in 1973. He was elected to the
association's board of directors and named senior vice president in
1991. He was designated president and chief executive officer of the
voluntary health organization in 2001.
Entertainer Jerry Lewis, MDA's national chairman, said: "Bob Ross
was the driving force that gave MDA its energy and its tremendous
level of quality. Those of us who knew him well realize that it was
his vision that shaped MDA into the powerful force it has become."
Lewis added, "He was also a dear personal friend to me and to
thousands of people with neuromuscular diseases. MDA and I will miss
him tremendously."
Lois R. West, chairman of the board of directors, said: "Bob Ross
was a remarkably dedicated leader, who developed MDA from its early
days as a handful of local chapters into its status as one of the
nation's and the world's best-known health organizations."
West added, "For more than four decades, he coordinated MDA
activities related to fundraising, publicity, medical and
humanitarian services, disability policies, and above all, medical
research. In doing so, he constantly kept the attention of a
nationwide staff and an army of 2 million volunteers focused on
MDA's overriding mission -- the search for treatments and cures for
neuromuscular diseases."
Jerry Weinberg, the association's chief operating officer and a
colleague of 49 years, said Ross was an outstanding executive and a
dear friend.
"It was a great honor and privilege to work with Bob Ross in
building MDA into an internationally recognized nonprofit agency,"
Weinberg said. "In addition to being an unmatched leader and
humanitarian, Bob was my best and closest friend."
A native New Yorker, Ross worked as a radio writer and publicist
before joining MDA.
He was on the staff of the U.S. coordinator of information for
the Voice of America and the U.S. Department of State from 1942 to
1951. In that capacity, for several years he wrote the
English-language version of "America Calling Europe," a broadcast on
world affairs that was beamed out worldwide each morning via the BBC
in London. He's credited with suggesting that the agency be renamed
"Voice of America."
Ross' leadership of MDA
As MDA's public information director, Ross recruited dozens of
business leaders and celebrities to help the association and
nurtured good relationships with the media. In 1966, he persuaded
Jerry Lewis to star in an MDA telethon on Labor Day -- the first
broadcast of what has become the nation's largest and best-known
televised fundraiser and an American Labor Day tradition.
In the 1970s, Ross represented MDA on the President's Committee
on Employment of the Handicapped (now the President's Committee on
Employment of People with Disabilities). In 1992, the Robert Ross
Scholarship for Rehabilitation Medicine was established by the
Newman Family Foundation at the University of Michigan School of
Medicine.
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 Under Ross' guidance, MDA developed the most comprehensive
program of medical and community services of any voluntary health
agency in the country, including a network of 240
hospital-affiliated clinics providing first-rate diagnosis and
follow-up care for people with neuromuscular diseases.
Also among his innovations were the initiation and expansion of
MDA's summer camp program for children with neuromuscular diseases;
development of the "Love Network," some 200 television stations that
annually broadcast the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon; and
establishment of a research grant program that draws many of the
world's top scientific minds to the neuromuscular field.
Beginning in 1950, MDA's research program built a body of
knowledge of muscle function and muscle disease from the ground up
and pioneered in the field of genetics and gene therapy. With the
world's top scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, heads of
neurology departments at major universities, and innovators in gene
therapy among its grantees, MDA operates several major research
centers and 37 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis research centers in the
United States and Europe, while funding investigations by some 400
scientific teams worldwide.
MDA-funded scientists discovered the genetic causes of some two
dozen neuromuscular diseases, including the most common forms of
muscular dystrophy and a form of Lou Gehrig's disease.
In the 1970s, MDA researchers developed a lifesaving
blood-exchange treatment for myasthenia gravis and inflammatory
myopathies. Under MDA's leadership, life expectancy for most people
with neuromuscular diseases has been extended through physical
therapy, surgery and drug treatments.
In 2006, MDA began safety trials of a groundbreaking gene therapy
procedure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common and most
fatal childhood form of muscular dystrophy.
Also this year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the
marketing of Myozyme, a new treatment for Pompe's disease, a rare
genetic disorder also known as acid maltase enzyme deficiency. MDA
research provided the foundation for development of the treatment,
which saves the lives of infants born with the disease, and MDA
assisted in trials of Myozyme.
In 1990, Ross presided over the move of MDA's national
headquarters from New York to Tucson. Less than two years later, the
association erected a new headquarters building on donated land in
Tucson, using funds raised in a separate capital campaign, along
with a $1 million grant from the state of Arizona. The move saved
MDA several million dollars in operating costs.
MDA received numerous awards and recognitions under Ross'
leadership. In December 1996, MDA was recognized by the American
Medical Association with Lifetime Achievement Awards "for
significant and lasting contributions to the health and welfare of
humanity."
Ross is survived by a sister, Charlotte Zand of Great Neck, N.Y.,
and five nieces and nephews.
[Muscular
Dystrophy Association news release]
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