Cynthia Lufkin | Cancer activist, 51
Cynthia Lufkin, 51, whose marriage to a cofounder of Wall Street firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette created a New York power couple in social and philanthropic circles, died Wednesday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan of complications from breast and lung cancer. Her home was in Washington, Conn., north of New York City.
Cynthia Lufkin, 51, whose marriage to a cofounder of Wall Street firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette created a New York power couple in social and philanthropic circles, died Wednesday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan of complications from breast and lung cancer. Her home was in Washington, Conn., north of New York City.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 while pregnant with her second child, Ms. Lufkin focused her philanthropic work on the disease. With a degree in biochemistry, she was particularly interested in how healthy living could bolster the outlook for cancer patients, and her work led to the opening of the Cynthia Lufkin Fitness & Seminar Room at Sloan- Kettering's Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center.
"She focused on things which tended to be ignored by normal medical procedures and normal medical institutions," her husband, Dan Lufkin, 81, said Friday in an interview. Those included "the fact that recently diagnosed patients need reinforcement and understanding that this disease can be fought and its impacts postponed for a period of time."
Mrs. Lufkin was cochair of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in New York and was active in its support of a Sloan-Kettering project to develop a DNA vaccine for melanoma, a type of skin cancer. - Bloomberg News