Mary Woodward Lasker

Mary Lasker was a well-known and successful health activist and philanthropist; cofounder of the Lasker Foundation; founder of the National Health Education Committee;

the president of the Birth Control Federation of America; the winner of a Presidential

Medal of Freedom (1969) and the Congressional Gold Medal (1989). She was a personal

acquaintance of John F. Kennedy and later, after his death, a close friend of several

members of the Kennedy family. Lasker worked as an art dealer at Reinhardt Galleries in New York City. She married the owner Paul Reinhardt.