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FLASHBACK FRIDAY: MDA's Wings Over Wall Street Gala - 2009

Flashback Friday sponsored by Instinet

Traders Magazine Online News, October 26, 2018

John D'Antona Jr.

Traders love a good party – especially when its for a good cause.

On October 1, 2009, Traders Magazine gathered with myriad other finance professionals at Gotham Hall in New York to help fund research to prevent Muscular Dystrophy.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association was founded in 1950 by Paul Cohen, a prominent New York business leader living with muscular dystrophy, who invited a group of individuals to meet in his Rye, New York, office. Each had a personal connection to muscular dystrophy, and the gathering focused on the urgent need to raise funds to advance research seeking treatments and cures for muscular dystrophy. The group — so vested in the fight against neuromuscular diseases — formed the organization that became the Muscular Dystrophy Association. That year, MDA’s first research grant for $1,500 was awarded to neuromuscular disease pioneer Ade. T. Milhorat, M.D.

On June 29-30, 1956, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis co-hosted their first MDA telethon from New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall. Jerry Lewis hosted subsequent telethons in 1957 and 1959. In 1966, the first MDA Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon was broadcast by a single station in New York (WNEW-TV). The telecast was so successful that MDA selected Labor Day weekend for all future telethons. Then, with help from broadcasting icons Sylvester “Pat” Weaver and Robert M. Bennett, MDA created a “Love Network” of stations that in 1971 facilitated the nation’s first networked telethon.

Throughout the decades, the legendary Labor Day broadcast originated from different locations including New York, Las Vegas and Hollywood. The most successful fundraising event in the history of television, the show, with Lewis as its iconic host and with help from a legion of top celebrities and entertainers, raised nearly $2 billion during the years.

Please click here for the photo galleries:

http://www.tradersmagazine.com/gallery/-109282-1.html

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