Rye Brook Organ Donor Activist Dies At 36

By Michael Gannon

The Journal News

Original publication: November 4, 2003.

Wendy Marx learned the importance of organ transplantation 14 years ago, after falling into a coma and almost dying of a failed liver at the age of 22. She spent the remainder of her life working to increase public awareness of the procedure.

Marx, 36, died Oct. 28 in Stanford, Calif., while awaiting a third liver transplant. The Rye Brook native will be remembered in a White Plains memorial service tomorrow.

With the help of her Pulitzer Prize-winning brother and gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic track star Carl Lewis, a family friend who in 1989 made a public appeal to help her secure a new kidney, Marx traveled the country, meeting with hospitals, organ banks and community groups.

"Thirty-six years ago, God and my parents gave me the greatest gift I have ever received," said her brother Jeffrey Marx, who wrote a book, "It Gets Dark Sometimes," about Wendy Marx's fight for survival and her campaign for organ-donor awareness.

"Ever since then, my sister, Wendy, is the one who had been handing out the gifts. Gifts of kindness, gifts of love, gifts of passion and compassion," her brother said yesterday. "Those gifts speak to her whole life. And in the last 14 years, they speak directly to her work in the transplant community. For 14 years, Wendy has done everything she can to parlay her own near-death experiences into a powerful message of hope for others." Jeffrey Marx won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a series on cheating in college sports.

In 1989, Wendy Marx was a 22-year-old office manager for a San Francisco advertising firm when she became afflicted with the symptoms of acute viral hepatitis B. The disease, which doctors believe she might have contracted when she had her wisdom teeth removed, destroyed her liver and pushed her to the brink of death before she was saved by her first transplant.

Marx had a second transplant in 1992 after the virus struck again, but remained in good health with the aid of medication until about a year and a half ago. She was awaiting a third liver when she died at Stanford (Calif.) University Medical Center.

In 1990, Marx joined with her brother and Lewis to found the Washington, D.C.-based Wendy Marx Foundation for Organ Donor Awareness. In 2000, she and her brother went on a national tour to promote Jeffrey Marx's book and educate people about organ donation.

The foundation helped start a fellowship program to educate young doctors about organ transplants. In 1990, the Marx group and the National Kidney Foundation launched the U.S. Transplant Games.

In 2002, 5,329 people received liver transplants, according to figures from the United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond, Va., which manages the nation's organ-transplant system. Today, more than 17,000 people are on a waiting list for a new liver, and more than 82,000 are awaiting new organs of some kind, the organization said.

Marx is survived by her husband, E. David Ellington of San Francisco; her parents, Peggy Marx of Lake Worth, Fla., and Richard Marx of Bedford; and two brothers, Jeffrey Marx of Washington, D.C., and Jim Marx of White Plains.

Tomorrow's service will begin at 2 p.m. at Congregation Kol Ami, 252 Soundview Ave., White Plains.

Send e-mail to Michael Gannon.

Copyright © 2003 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.

This article posted December 26, 2003.