More than just Mitch

March 2024

Dear Friends and Family,

Please join our family in the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s annual GREAT STRIDES Walk To Cure CF on Sunday May 19 at 9:00 am at the Cox Science Center and Aquarium at Dreher Park, 4801 Dreher Trail N, 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 journey and partnership with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation began.    We are still in this fight 51 years later and will continue to be involved 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 had many dreams to travel the world; visit all the states in the US (he only had 4 to go!);  see all the Phish concerts he could manage; watch is boys grow up -  graduate high school, college.  His boys, Matias and Simon, were only 14 years old when he passed; now they are sophomores in college. 

Mitch was special not because he had CF but because of how he appreciated and embraced life.  Mitch left this world 6 ½ years ago but his spirit and his legacy remain.  The Mitch Greenberg Memorial Research Award was established in 2018 honoring Mitch for his insistence that the CF Foundation must do more to improve the outcomes of lung transplantation. 

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. 

But the CFF’s mission is to find a cure for this horrendous disease.  To date, 4 modulators have been developed to correct the basic defect of this disease.  Approximately 90% of CF individuals are able to lead a more normalized life as a result of this development. But for a small percentage – 10%  of the patient population - these drugs are not viable options for them because of their mutations.  We must continue our battle to help ALL people with CF lead a healthier life.  Most importantly, the Foundation is focused on a one time cure by correcting the basic defect through gene editing and gene modification.  Can you imagine being able to literally cut out the bad part of a CF gene and insert a corrected copy?  Amazing but it is being done for some diseases and it will ultimately happen for CF.  Your continued support is invaluable to this success. 

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.  Just contact me at 301-674-4077 / ggreenberg47@gmail.com and I will register you.    

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