Turning Silence into Hope

When my wife reminded me about the walk at Drake Park on Sunday, I said, “Yeah, sure,” my head still in the fog of the financial tsunami featuring the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the government bailout of AIG, money-market fund losses, and Treasury Secretary Paulson’s plan for the government to buy $700 billion of toxic mortgage-backed securities. I couldn’t think about the meaning of a charity walk while the economy was teetering in the midst of the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

            Shabbat came after the stock market recovered and a calm sanity seemed to reappear. On Sunday morning, we picked up our friend, Beverly Yost, who had asked if we could join her in the Janis Warren Walk to raise money to battle ovarian cancer. I had sent a donation but was not looking forward to getting up early on a chilly, cloudy morning to walk. I had silently accepted, however, knowing this was just a little mitzvah and certainly not worth making a fuss about.

            I knew that this was the first walk of its kind but understood little of ovarian cancer except that one of our dearest friends is a survivor and that her sister has been suffering for months from the same awful disease. When we arrived at Drake Park on Sunday, September 21st, the sky was gloomy but the volunteers were spirited as they passed out shirts, ribbons, bagels, donuts, coffee, fruit, and had ordered pizza for after the walk.

            I enjoyed the food and the commitments of the walkers and volunteers but was still nonchalant until the Warren family spoke about the horrors of ovarian cancer, known as “the Silent Killer.” As Janis’ son-in-law Danny, daughter Stephanie, and husband Larry Warren began to speak, the wind died down and the sun came out. The weather became nice but the facts of ovarian cancer are anything but. Over 22,000 women were diagnosed with the disease last year and over 15,500 will die this year. The chances of women getting ovarian cancer are about 1 in 67 but greater for white women over 55 and even higher for Ashkenazi Jews. Most importantly, there is NO SCREENING TEST for ovarian cancer: no Pap Smear, no blood test, nothing.

            If you don’t know whether you have ovarian cancer, what are the signs? Some signals are abdominal or pelvic discomfort, persistent gastrointestinal distress such as gas and indigestion, frequent urination, unexplained weight gain or weight loss, pelvic or abdominal swelling and bloating, and persistent fatigue. These systems are so common in women that it becomes difficult to tell if you’re just stuck in unnecessary fear or if you really have cancer: that is the terrible dilemma.

            Janis Warren was an 11-year survivor of breast cancer but she walked daily, watched her health rigorously, and had routine checkups. When she started getting “vague” abdominal discomfort and occasional stomach cramps, she thought it was just signs of getting older and didn’t complain. By the time ovarian cancer was detected, it had already spread. Chemotherapy, radiation, two surgeries, and a colostomy kept her going for awhile, but after 18 months of the war on cancer, she died. Her last words to her family were, “You will be just fine when I am gone.”

            The heart-breaking words and tears at the Sunday walk from her husband Larry and daughter Stephanie on Sunday prove what the www.janiswalk.org website claims, “We are not fine.” The website goes on: “We are not fine to think that her death might have been preventable had there been a reliable screening exam. We are not fine to think that her death might be without gain. We are not fine to think that other women have and will have the same struggles she did—the debilitating course of the cancer followed by a premature death.”

Rather than staying silent and “moving on,” Janis’ son, Dr. Michael Warren, an obstetrician/gynecologist in New York, son Jeffrey, daughter Stephanie, and husband Larry decided to take action. They planned a walk to raise money for the awareness of ovarian cancer and to benefit a more urgent cause: to support Dr. Michael Tainsky of the Karmanos Cancer Institute and his research to develop a simple blood test to detect ovarian cancer at an early stage when it is much more treatable. Having a good, reliable early detection test could save thousands of lives. How many hours of agony and grief could be spared?

Dr. Tainsky’s research has immense potential to accurately measure markers specific to ovarian cancer. He said at the walk that the tests he and his team of researchers have developed are already about 75% accurate. But they are pushing to make the test so accurate that it will be ready for FDA testing and approval within a year or two. He is thankful for the Warrens’ help as well as the Gail Purtan Ovarian Cancer Fund, but the researchers need more money to continue.  The U.S. government is certainly not going to have any money for this type of cancer research. It is too preoccupied with its own financial debt obligations.

The Janis Warren 2008 walk raised over $50,000 before the walk began. But it is so easy to forget a good cause after the big event. And that we can’t do. The goal of this walk was and continues to be deadly serious. We must turn silence into hope, fear into action, uncertainty into going to your doctor and asking questions. When you feel the symptoms of discomfort, swelling, nausea, unusual weight gain or loss, and fatigue, don’t wait. Get to a doctor and ask him about ovarian cancer.

Make the loss of Janis Warren a gain for other women around the world. Go to www.janiswalk.org or to www.karmanos.org and donate what you can. Hopefully, by the time of the Janis Warren Walk next year, the early detection blood test will be radically improved and the money raised will be substantial. Let’s take the grief-stained tears of the Warren family and do everything we can to stop the path of the silent killer.    

Liquidation

Last summer, I felt proud that my son, Kyle, a junior at the prestigious Wharton School of Business, was working in the summer as an intern at the also-prestigious Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850. Its website proclaimed, “The history of Lehman Brothers parallels the growth of the United States and its energetic drive toward prosperity and international prominence. What would evolve into a global financial entity began as a general store in the American South. Henry Lehman, an immigrant from Germany, opened his small shop in the city of Montgomery, Alabama in 1844. Six years later, he was joined by brothers Emanuel and Mayer, and they named the business Lehman Brothers.”

            Today, Lehman’s website says, “Lehman Brothers, an innovator in global finance, serves the financial needs of corporations, governments and municipalities, institutional clients, and high net worth individuals worldwide. Founded in 1850, Lehman Brothers maintains leadership positions in equity and fixed income sales, trading and research, investment banking, private investment management, asset management and private equity. The Firm is headquartered in New York, with regional headquarters in London and Tokyo, and operates in a network of offices around the world.”

            They need to change their website. After 158 years in business, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection and is being liquidated. The news cameras showed hundreds of employees walking out of the tall Times Square headquarters, with their tote bags, briefcases, computers, and suitcases. It was as if hundreds of competitors on The Apprentice Show had all been fired by at the same time and escorted out of the glass towers on Wall Street. The only difference is that these people had jobs, income, and wages that they had worked their lives to earn. They weren’t just television tourists on a TV “reality show.”

A little over a year ago, Lehman’s stock was about $80 a share and the business seemed to be flourishing with mergers and acquisitions, private equity, fixed income, and investment banking. Kyle worked over 50 hours a week as an intern and was involved in one of the large company acquisitions that Lehman had been hired to manage. He felt that something might be going wrong on one of the Lehman Monday calls. He says, “When the banks went to sell the debt in the open market (for two private equity deals,) no one bought it and it was the first sign that something might be wrong with highly levered loans. The banks then had to take on all that debt on to their own balance sheet and fund it themselves. On the call were people from leveraged finance and they said we are still open for business but looking at things more cautiously now. A few weeks after I left, almost all PE (private equity) deals were on hold since the fear that no one would buy the highly levered debt—and then it tailspinned.”

            During Kyle’s last week, Lehman made him a very generous offer to come to work after college, including base pay, health insurance, travel expenses, and a large projected bonus based on past history. Kyle writes, “When I think back to during all this is all the people that tried to pitch me to stay. They were saying this is the best time in the history of the company and what a great time to start at the firm. I asked one of the MDs what would happen if the PE markets washed up and he said it wasn’t a problem since they would just do more restructuring work or sell side of companies. Everyone back then was so confident and not worried at all and even when they came back in October, when they wanted us to sign, they were saying that it was almost over and not anywhere close to what happened in 2000. I’m glad I never bought in to all the crazy things they were telling me.

“No one possible could have forecasted this last summer—there were hundreds of things that led to this collapse—it’s just crazy how psychology and fear can destroy a company so large.”

            How right he was! The risky no-money-down mortgage business that most banks and financial companies had been making billions on became a plague that spread to Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Citigroup, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Lehman Brothers, to name a handful. The losses spread and the merger and acquisition market dried up, banks stopped risky lending, and then the billions of write-offs began. And the stocks kept going down and down for a year.

            But don’t fear: the government is here. Move Bear Stearns to JP Morgan with the government’s help. Take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and swallow over $250 billion in debt. Tell the businesses that the government can’t help anymore and let Lehman Brothers go under and then let a $650 billion 158-year-old company get swallowed up by Barclay in England for $2 billion. Then, change your tune and buy most of the AIG Insurance Company and give them an $85 billion dollar loan. Then, stop short-selling for awhile and discuss a government enterprise that will take over all financial institutions’ bad debt. Then, come up with a way to back-stop the trillions of money market funds that had been collapsing.

            And then the stock market rises in pandemonium.

            We need to calm down and liquidate our fears but it’s not easy when the leadership in Washington and Wall Street is so reactive and inconsistent.

            Do you feel confident that either Barack Obama or John McCain will bring the right leadership to the economy? I certainly don’t. But I am tired of worrying about it.

Let liquidation and meltdowns take their course and let’s watch, like spectators at a sporting event…except that it’s our money, our tax dollars, our children, and us that are the athletes. And no one knows what winning looks like.