More than just Mitch

March, 2023

Dear Friends and Family,

Our annual walkathon in support of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, GREAT STRIDES To Cure CF, will be held Saturday May 13, 2023 at 9:00 am at the Dreher Park in West Palm Beach.  We hope you will join us as a walker and/or a sponsor of our team “More Than Just Mitch”. 

A half century ago, our family began our journey and partnership with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  50 years later, we are still in this fight; and will continue to be until we can finally say “a cure has been found”.  Frank Deford wrote in his book, “Alex, the Life of a Child” that “old people die with accomplishments, memories.  Young people die with opportunities, dreams.”  That was our Mitch. 

Mitch would have turned 50 years old on March 4.  He left this world 5 ½ years ago.  But I know he is still with us as I keep receiving travel magazines and emails addressed to me but begin “Dear Mitchell,  we haven’t seen you in a while.  Come join us in South America, the Amazon, Africa, the Mediterranean”.  So I know that Mitch is moving around with his friends to faraway places. 

Mitch’s legacy remains with his twin boys, Matias and Simon, who are almost 20 years old as well as the CF Foundation and their commitment to the lung transplant initiative,  which was established in 2015, two years prior to Mitch’s passing.  Our family was very vocal on the need for this and I am happy to report that much progress has been made in this area. 

To date, $50 million has been dedicated to the Lung Transplant Initiative with a primary focus on how to prevent and/or better treat chronic lung rejection.   Mitch had two double lung transplants both of which ended in chronic rejection.  During his third transplant, he endured multiple complications and ultimately lost his battle at the age of 44.  Today, as a result of this initiative,  new procedures have been implemented and multiple guidelines have been developed to improve the process of the transplant journey. 

In  2018 the CF Foundation established the Mitch Greenberg Memorial Research Award to improve the outcomes of lung transplantation. This year the award was presented to scientists at the University of Toronto and Columbia University to examine whether there is a connection between rejection and digestive reflux by testing bile acids found in the lungs of transplant recipients.  

There are now four drugs which have been developed to correct the basic defect of CF in approximately 92% of our patients.  CF is no longer considered a pediatric disease as the average age of our patients is now 53 years!  And as a result of these drugs, Trikafta in particular, the number of individuals on the lung transplant list has dropped considerably.  From a high of 250 CF individuals receiving lung transplants in 2017, to only 30 patients in 2021.  For the most part, this was due to the introduction of this one drug in 2019.  Mitch always felt he was born a generation too early. 

We hope you will once again support our family as we join thousands of others throughout this country to raise money through the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s GREAT STRIDES Walk to Cure CF.  Please join us in support of our team - More than Just Mitch - for this year's walk.

A generous donation to the CF Foundation in honor of Mitch:  $50, $100, or $1,000 – whatever amount you feel comfortable with – would be greatly appreciated.  You can make a donation online by going to

http://fightcf.cff.org/goto/MorethanjustMitch

If you live in Florida and would like to join our team for the walk, we would love to have you.  You can register yourself as a walker using the link above OR just contact me at 301-674-4077 / ggreenberg47@gmail.com and I will handle it. 

You can also mail us your donation at:  3546 S Ocean Blvd #902, Palm Beach, FL  33480.  If you have received this through snail mail, a return envelope has been enclosed for your convenience. 

As always, we thank you with every breath in our body.  We miss Mitchell every day and think of him always.  But we know he is watching us and smiling down on us as we move forward to ensure that his CF brothers and sisters will have a longer life than his 44 short years.  Thank you for keeping Mitch’s memory alive. 

All our love,

Bill and Gayle