Dana Reeve dies at 44 of lung cancer

Widow of actor Christopher Reeve fought for paralysis cure

Updated: 12:08 p.m. ET March 7, 2006
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - Dana Reeve, who won worldwide admiration for
her devotion to her "Superman" husband, Christopher Reeve, through
his decade of near-total paralysis, has died of lung cancer at the
age of 44.

Reeve, a singer-actress who gave up some of her own career to be one
of the nation's best-known caregivers, died late Monday at Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Medical Center, said Kathy Lewis, president of the
Christopher Reeve Foundation.

Reeve had succeeded her husband as chair of the foundation, which
funded research into spinal-cord paralysis cures. She announced in
August that, while she wasn't a smoker, she had been diagnosed with
lung cancer.

Lewis visited Reeve in the hospital Friday and said Reeve was "tired
but with her typical sense of humor and smile, always trying to make
other people feel good, her characteristic personality."

"She was a woman with an incredible heart who really put herself out
there to help people with disabilities and especially those who are
caregivers — something she knew a lot about," Lewis said.

Reeves' "grace and courage under the most difficult of circumstances
was a source of comfort and inspiration to all of us," Lewis added
in a statement.

Four months ago, at a fundraising gala for the foundation, Reeve
looked healthy in a long, formal gown and said she was responding
well to treatment and her tumor was shrinking.

"I'm beating the odds and defying every statistic the doctors can
throw at me," Reeve said then. "My prognosis looks better all the
time."

Asked how she kept her spirits up, Reeve said she "had a great
model."

"I was married to a man who never gave up," she said.

She was still looking well on Jan. 13, when she sang Carole
King's "Now and Forever" at Madison Square Garden during the
retirement ceremony for Mark Messier's New York Rangers jersey.

Christopher Reeve, star of Hollywood's "Superman" movies, became an
activist for spinal cord research after a horse-riding accident
paralyzed him in 1995. He died Oct. 10, 2004.

Dana Reeve was a constant companion and supporter of her husband
during his long ordeal and his work for a cure for spinal cord
injuries.

A career on stage
The couple had a 13-year-old son, Will, and Dana Reeve had two grown
stepchildren, Matthew and Alexandra.

Reeve, who lived in Pound Ridge, had appeared on Broadway, off-
Broadway and regional stages and on the TV shows "Law &
Order," "Oz," and "All My Children."

She was performing in the Broadway-bound play "Brooklyn Boy" in
California when she had to rush home to reach her husband's bedside
before he died. She gave up the role for the New York run.

A month after she was widowed, before her own diagnosis, she told
The Associated Press, "I definitely will be getting back to
acting. ... I am an actress and I do have to make a living."

Reeve also was on the board of the Williamstown Theatre Festival in
Massachusetts, where she met Christopher Reeve doing summer theater,
and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.

A year ago, she won a Mother of the Year award from the American
Cancer Society. A society vice president, Dr. Michael Thun, said
Reeve "has shown strength and courage in the face of tremendous
adversity." Doctors say 1 in 5 women diagnosed with the disease
never lit a cigarette.

In addition to her son and step-children, she is survived by her
father, Dr. Charles Morosini, and sisters Deborah Morosini and
Adrienne Morosini Heilman.

No funeral plans were announced. The family said donations could be
made in Dana Reeve's memory to the Christopher Reeve Foundation in
Short Hills, N.J.