Bob Dylan: When I met him, he was not functioning with all his facilities at hundred percent, ya know. But the person I saw, I was there more as a servant, than as somebody there, ya I knew all his songs and I went there to sing him his songs – he always liked the songs – and he’d ask for certain ones, I knew them all. I was like a Woody Guthrie jukebox.
Steve Earle: After a fifteen-year battle, Woody finally succumbed to Huntington’s disease and passed away at Creedmore State Hospital on October 3rd, 1967. Marjorie, Arlo, Joady, and Nora scattered Woody’s ashes at their family spot on Beach 36 in Coney Island, saying goodbye to him in the place they called home for so many years. Determined to do something for those living with this rare inherited illness, Marjorie founded the Committee to Combat Huntington’s Disease, later renamed the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. Marjorie’s approach was unique in that she felt the most effective way to make progress was to bring people together: connect doctors with patients, researchers with doctors, push for legislative support for rare diseases and provide support for the families giving in-home care—truly a multi-tiered approach to finding a cure and making a difference. Until her death in 1983, Marjorie traveled the world organizing and making significant grassroots progress to put an end to this fatal disease.
Music: Bob Dylan, “Song to Woody”