"Such Kindness"

The troubled little woman who went to the out-patient clinic of Manhattan's famed Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases in May 1949 was neatly but cheaply dressed. She described herself to the admission clerk as Margaret Williams Pierce, unmarried. Age: 62. Occupation: telephone operator-receptionist. Salary: $160 a month.

Patient Pierce was suffering from a breast cancer, and it was so far advanced that surgery was impossible. Memorial's doctors gave her drugs to ease the pain and hormones to slow the cancer's spread, thus prolonged the life they could not save. Week after week Miss Pierce went back for treatment. Once she told a clinic social worker: "I have never met with such kindness before in my life." It was plain to Memorial officials that Margaret Pierce could pay only nominal sums for her care; most of it was free. In a year she paid only $34.50.

A year after her first visit to the clinic, Margaret Pierce became gravely ill, was admitted to another hospital. The nurse who put her to bed was surprised to find that she carried $4,000 in cash. Within three days Margaret Pierce was dead. Soon her will was filed; except for $1,000 to a cousin, she had left everything to Memorial, but hospital officials did not expect it would amount to much. Last week, when her safe deposit box was opened, jewelry, stocks, bonds, gold and bank books showed that Margaret Pierce had repaid Memorial's kindness. She had left about $150,000 for research, to help save others from the suffering she had known.

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