Montel Williams talks the talk, walks the walk in Yorktown to raise money for MS research
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- September
- 17
Talk show host Montel Williams visited Yorktown on Saturday morning for his foundation’s inaugural Westchester Walk to Defeat MS. The Manhattan resident was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999 and launched the Montel Williams MS Foundation a year later.
Today the foundation reported that the inaugural event attracted 83 people and raised $98,844, which would be dedicated to MS research and the quest for a cure. Foundation Manager Janine Quijije said the donation deadline for this intitiative would be extended until Oct. 19 in an effort to reach and surpass the $100,000 goal.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Williams told me that the foundation has donated more than $1.2 million since its inception.
“We’re funding research at some of the top research hospitals in the world, including the Nobel Institute,” he said. “We’ve been funding a project there for two years, and they’ve now been published for having identified one of the genes that may be responsible for MS – based solely on the money we’ve given them.”
Somers resident Sue Walsh, who also lives with the disease, had never met Williams prior to the event, which she co-chaired. “He’s a nice man,” she said. “And you can tell he’s very passionate about (the cause).”
“The Montel Williams Show” is filming its 17th nationally syndicated season, which is slated to include its 3,400th episode.
Helping Walsh organize the event was fellow Somers resident Melanie McLaughlin, who works as Williams’ executive producer, manager and president of his MS foundation.
For more information about the Montel Williams MS Foundation, you can read the story I wrote for Saturday’s edition of The Journal News and visit www.montelms.org.
This entry was posted
on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 12:54 pm by Chris Serico.
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