75 years ago, a movement began that changed the world for people affected by MS. When Sylvia Lawry’s brother, Bernard, began experiencing visual and balance problems in 1945, she and her sister Alice placed a classified advertisement in The New York Times: “Multiple sclerosis. Will anyone recovered from it please communicate with patient.” The sisters received 54 replies from people as desperate as they were. Most asked to be informed if the two heard anything promising. “I was looking for medical clues that might have helped my brother,” Ms. Lawry said in an interview with The New York Post in 1959. “But when the responses started to snowball and come from all over the country, I decided to give up the law and let my creative energies spill over into helping people with MS.” Sylvia realized the need for an organized effort to encourage and finance research into the cause, treatment and cure of multiple sclerosis. On March 11, 1946, Ms. Lawry, a young woman without a scientific background, gathered 20 of the nation’s most prominent research scientists and medical experts and founded what would become the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Her passion and perseverance launched a movement that’s led to more breakthroughs than the world has seen for any other neurological disease. The National MS Society brings the MS movement together—and turns our power and passion into real results. When the Society was founded 75 years ago, MS was neglected and poorly understood. What began as one woman’s vision and commitment is now a nationwide organization leading the global charge to create a world free of MS.