Nutrition for Optimal Health Association, Inc.

Jane Brady

Jane Brady's vitality and drive were instrumental in the founding of NOHA in 1972. That year she took part in a class at the Highland Park, Illinois "Y," which was given by Barbara Sachsel on Roger J. Williams book, Nutrition Against Disease: Environmental Prevention, Pitman Publishing Corporation, 1971. Even back then, Dr. Williams had pointed out that there was already a vast amount of knowledge, based on scientific research, demonstrating the effects of various nutrients on preventing our debilitating and deadly diseases. He was eloquent on the non-existent or completely inadequate teaching of nutrition in the medical schools in America. At that time, only a handful of doctors used nutrition in their practices. Often, I'm sure they felt lonely. NOHA Honorary Member, the late Barbara Sachsel, who inspired Jane, gathered some of those lonely doctors in her home to talk to each other (I always think of the salons for writers in France as having a similar ambiance.) These doctors were some of the founding members of NOHA's Professional Advisory Board.

After Barbara's class, Jane felt that the information presented by Dr. Williams was so interesting that we needed an ongoing organization to disseminate the excellent scientific information that is available on the importance of nutrition in combating disease and in pursuing optimal health. Jane worked carefully and hard on our by-laws and on establishing us as a not-for-profit educational organization, to which we can make tax-deductible donations. At her instigation, NOHA was born and Jane Brady was the founding president.

From the beginning NOHA has been independent of commercial and political interests. Naturally, our success attracted salesmen wanting to promote their products at our meetings. Often, Jane told them that they could NOT give out any information about their products. She was persistent and always courteous. Their products may be good but that is not the issue: NOHA does not promote products. I remember several times Jane preventing a man from distributing flyers about full spectrum lights at our meetings and also seeing Jane take an advertisement for trampolines off the bulletin board at another meeting.

Jane has always been adamant that our speakers have excellent scientific credentials. We are a lay organization and have worked hard to maintain our credibility over these many years.

When our newsletter, NOHA NEWS, was started, we never just used newspaper reports, we always insisted on going to the original sources: scientific articles or books. During the first years when we published NOHA NEWS, Jane, Barbara, and I were on a committee to check articles. Shirley Converse, who suggested we have a newsletter, wrote it with clarity and humor. She was NOHA's fourth president and appreciated our input on articles. Amazingly, on one occasion, the three of us found that a graduate student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, who volunteered to write articles for us and who was planning to be a scientific writer when she graduated, summarized a scientific article so inaccurately that courteously we had to dismiss her. Of course, Jane, Barbara, and I redid the summary.

We have also been most careful in choosing the NOHA Honorary Members and the members of our Professional Advisory Board. On one occasion, a researcher at a nearby institution claimed that he had found the cure for cancer. Interesting? Jane, Shirley, and I visited his laboratory and found that the animals were not even properly confined, let alone carefully monitored. We were disgusted and Jane also found inaccuracies in a publication of his. We insisted that NOHA not invite him to be an honorary member. A few years later all his work was discredited. Wonderful people have accepted our invitations to be honorary members of NOHA, including two Nobel Laureates, Linus Pauling and Albert Szent-Gyorgi.

Over the years, we have had marvelous speakers and continue to do so. On June 2, 1977, the late NOHA Honorary Member Roger J Williams, PhD, ScD, who inspired our founding, was the NOHA speaker at our Fifth Anniversary Celebration. On June 6,1987, the late NOHA Honorary Member Linus Pauling, PhD, two-time Nobel Laureate, was the NOHA speaker at our Fifteen Anniversary Celebration.

All her life Jane was vitally interested in NOHA's welfare and its continuing presentation of cutting edge scientific information on nutrition and health. I know that Jane would appreciate greatly our gifts in her memory to NOHA at P.O. Box 380, Winnetka, IL 60093.