Francis X. Morrissey Jr.'s Philanthropic Initiatives
His efforts to help the needy and destitute through his work with charities, cultural institutions and individuals |
For Francis, philanthropy, public service and acts of charity have always been an important part of his life.
“Philanthropy means investing in the spirit of a person," said Francis. "I've always wanted to invest in promising individuals to make sure that they could manifest their destiny and realize their God-given gifts no matter where they were born and what level they were from."
This impulse started early.
“Thanks to the influence of my parents – both my mother and father did social work – I have a bent for charity and philanthropic endeavors," said Francis. "Beginning my freshman year at Harvard, I enjoyed most working at the Phillip Brooks House, a student-run, public service organization affiliated with the University."
“This might seem a small thing, but the first memory that comes to mind was helping some of the inmates at a local prison carve pumpkins that they donated to local schools. The idea was to get these men to realize that, with their spirit, they could do something good. Then I began to realize that when you take on the responsibility of a man, it is a solemn duty. These people are not replaceable."
Much of Francis's impulse to help others goes back to his journey to Pakistan in 1962 when he attended a classmate's wedding. After the wedding, he traveled on to India and stayed for a time in the luxurious home of the Maharani of Jaipur at the recommendation of another Harvard classmate's father, Pakistan's General Muhammad Musa. While wandering the poorer sections of Jaipur, Francis saw a poor woman desperately pulling food from a dog's mouth. “That image has stayed with me my entire life," said Francis, who also said that the memory fueled a lifelong passion for helping the poor.
When he returned to Harvard for his sophomore year, and for the rest of his life, Francis said that the urge for social status and the trappings of wealth seemed absurd. Now, in his seventies, after a stint in prison, he says, “Looking at the social page in the New York Times, I realize the social world is all trappings. It's all different forms of creating fear and insecurity to organize and control people. So, in my philanthropy, I always go back to the importance of the individual spirit, poor or rich, no matter what their place is in life."
POMO INDIANS
While attending at Hastings Law School in San Francisco in the late 1960s, Francis worked with the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Indian Land to help the Pomo Indians save their reservation in Ukiah, California. “The Army Corps of Engineers were ready to flood the reservation, and three or four of us worked to get Governor Ronald Reagan [1967-1975] to sign an injunction to stop it. We used the influence of the Sierra Club to bring to light the fact that the water that they'd save by flooding the reservation would be sent down to Los Angeles – and more of it would evaporate going from Ukiah to Los Angeles than would be saved."
Francis added, “It wasn't the trees that interested me. It was those Pomo Indians. It was their spirit and drive to protect themselves and keep their reservation lands intact that was so important. I spent a lot of time with the women because the men were often rendered too incapable of action by alcoholism. I remember one woman saying to me that after the [1902 National Indian Lands Reclamation Act] Indians were given private ownership of their lands. This woman explained to me they would sell the land to pay a funeral bill. So, the spirit of those people to protect themselves, that's what moved me to do that work."
Francis also tutored two Sioux Indians in high school and assisted a Cherokee Indian man to gain entrance to college and then law school.
Founded a women's clinic – PREGNANCY HELP
After passing the bar, Francis started working on corporate and antitrust work at the New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher in the early '70s. Frustrated by losing touch with his desire to help the disadvantaged, Francis founded a women's clinic called Pregnancy Help. “It was a little clinic on 14th Street in New York City. It was a nonpolitical, nonreligious, nonprofit attempt to help women to find out if they were pregnant. The clinic gave them a sonogram and then the women could come in and seek to counsel if they wished and we provided information on how to get health care and what to do with their baby." In the beginning, Francis gave clinic $25,000 of his money. “I bought a sonogram machine," he said.
Francis diverged from strict Catholic teaching by directing his clinic to provide condoms. When confronted by a Catholic clergyman, Francis argued: “Our job is to protect life. We have an opportunity to give these women some way to protect themselves because they were just getting off the street. I don't want their life threatened by some deadly disease."
He continued to work with the clinic from the early ‘80s through the late ‘90s.
Served on the boards of medical research organizations and Neuro-Regeneration research organizations
“I served as on the board of the American Hospital in Paris and helped them raise money. My primary interest there was to get French doctors to understand American techniques and to get modern American equipment like dialysis into the hospitals so that it could help diabetics. I helped them to get contributors to fund this equipment and other things they desperately needed. We raised a lot of money. I used my social connections to give a dinner in Paris and that sort of thing. I also was on the Columbia Presbyterian Health Sciences Advisory Council and the executive board of the Institute for Sports Medicine Research. They both arose from my work with the American Hospital in Paris."
THE WAKEMAN AWARD
In the early 1970s, Alan Reich, President of the National Paraplegic Foundation was paralyzed in a diving accident. He partnered with pioneering spinal researcher William Windle to create the William T. Wakeman Award. Wakeman became a paraplegic after his wife shot him during a family argument at their Palm Beach home. Determined to walk or die, he underwent surgery by a physician who promised to cure him of paraplegia. However, William died during the operation. His guilt-ridden widow helped organize a Palm Beach conference in neuro-regeneration and spurred the creation of the Wakeman Award.
“When I got involved with the Wakeman Prize, doctors in the field discouraged posting the award," said Francis. “A doctor at NYU told me they wanted to use the money to fund chairs. I said ‘We only have $10,000 every other year to give for this award. That is not enough to fund a chair.' Working with the Wakeman Award, I came to realize a few things. One, these paralyzed men needed proof that scientists were working for neuro-regeneration and that it was a real possibility. Two, I wanted the Wakeman to connect with the spirit of the men who hoped to walk again someday – and to connect with the spirit of the researchers seeking to find a solution. Back in the early 1970s, few individuals had the guts to support that unrealistic (at that time) objective."
“In some ways," says Francis, “The Wakeman was a courageous enterprise ahead of its time. In fact, the people who won the award in the early years had never won any other award. But they went on to earn even greater distinctions. Dr. Roger Sperry won the Wakeman Research Award, then won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981. Other Wakeman winners include two students of Doctor Stephen Kuffler, a preeminent Hungarian neurophysiologist who died in 1980, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
THE QUAN FELLOWSHIP
In 1981, Dr. Stuart Quan asked Francis to help develop the Quan Fellowship, which offered a $10,000 semi-annual prize to students for their research in neurological science. “Dr. Quan originally funded it," said Francis, “but I helped him organize it into a sustained enterprise and seek ongoing funding."
In the process, Francis became Member of the Board of Directors of the Harvard Medical School Advisory Council for Neurobiology where he worked with Dr. Quan.
Francis established a fast friendship with Dr. Quan. “He was the first Chinese graduate of Harvard Medical School," said Francis. “He told me that when he was in medical school, he walked down the Charles River and contemplated suicide because people thought he was Japanese. His father brought the Peking Opera to San Francisco and founded the Chinese Hospital there. And his mother, although she was born in San Francisco, followed ancient customs. Her feet were bound, and when she would walk, she held Stuart's head as a cane. People would often say to her, ‘What a beautiful child you have.' And she would say, ‘I found him in a garbage can.' What he didn't realize when he was a child, was she was trying to reverse the curse that is put on a child when you compliment them in Chinese culture."
Francis is heartened by continued progress in the field. “The focus on neuro-regeneration has had some success because of innovation in the field. Now there is an experimental treatment in which they freeze the spinal cord immediately after injuries to slow damage and reduce swelling, protecting the spinal cord immediately after the injury," said Francis. "That treatment was first done in Russia and Eastern Europe. One of the researchers whose work I looked at during my involvement with the Wakeman Prize was working on that project."
“Though therapeutic hypothermia has been used in other cases, such as following a cardiac arrest, since the 1970s, it is not a widely used treatment for spinal cord injury," said Dr. Roger Humphries, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Kentucky. The use of hypothermia for spinal cord injuries garnered public attention in 2007 after Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett was treated with it following an injury during a game. Neurologists believe that the cooling may have prevented him from further injury and has aided his ability to come back from a quadriplegic state.
ERICK HAWKINS DANCE FOUNDATION
In the mid-1980s, while working for the Deere Trust, Francis worked on the board of directors of The Erick Hawkins Dance Foundation. “Eric Hawkins was Martha Graham's husband for about 15 minutes," said Francis. “Then he formed his company. He thought that training dancers should not result in injury. And, to make a long story short, we did a few performances. He combined American Indian and classical dance into a new formula."
MEDIA CARES FOUNDATION
In the early 1990s, Francis helped with the Media Cares Foundation, which helped get African American children into schools.
MUSICA RUSSICA FOUNDATION
In 1991 Francis helped found the Musica Russica Foundation. “After the fall of the Soviet Union, I was approached by people to help save Russian Music. Established in 1987, Musica Russica is the largest publisher of Russian choral music outside of Russia. We were very interested in the Kirov-Mariinsky Company in St. Petersburg, whose head was Valery Gergiev, a Russian conductor and opera company director. Over the years, he was a general director and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic and artistic director of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg."
“Now, Gergiev is a rich and powerful conductor making $16 million a year," said Francis. “But back then, they had no money; they had nothing. So I gave the foundation a desk in my office and the conference room in the General Motors building. That foundation helped bring some of the first operas from the Kirov-Mariinsky to the Metropolitan Opera."
Francis explains that his modest organization was a poor match for Gergiev's customary fees and global ambition. “At first, I thought we were just going to save the music, but the Kirov had no funding. So, it turns out we had to save them by raising money here and by getting them to come to the United States and play. But, in the end, we raised money, sent them instruments and antibiotics because many were suffering from pneumonia and tuberculosis. The problem was that we couldn't get enough money to satisfy Valery Gergiev because he wanted millions and millions, and we couldn't raise that much."
“Our contributors were New Yorkers who were very interested in music. Katia Chapin was a good friend of mine, and she got people like Jim Burke, the CEO of Johnson & Johnson from 1976 to 1989, and her husband, the late Schuyler Chapin, who had been Assistant General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera from 1972 to 1976, to donate."
“We also arranged for Gergiev to fly to San Francisco to conduct some music for Gordon Getty Jr., billionaire heir to the Getty fortune, investor and classical music composer. Gergiev was expecting $10 million, and he got $10,000. So, the expectation of the Russians at that time were way, way out of kilter."
VLADIMIR SPIVAKOV INTERNATIONAL CHARITY FOUNDATION
Francis worked with a foundation run by Vladimir Spivakov, one of Russia's eminent violinists and the principal conductor and music director of the Russian National Orchestra.
“Spivakov formed the foundation to help orphans and those who were physically challenged, particularly children from Chernobyl. I was very interested in it because I'd met a little girl who was born after Chernobyl and was one of the first to survive neuroblastoma. I tried to get Sloan Kettering in New York City to see these children, but that mission failed because we couldn't get through the Russian bureaucracy."
LAURA PELS THEATRE FOUNDATION
“We I tried very hard to get African American writers and directors, to produce plays," he said. "Their first production in New York was a 2004 play called Intimate Apparel written by Lynn Nottage and starring Viola Davis. The Foundation also brought back Arthur Miller's play The Crucible to the stage."
PERSONAL PRO BONO ASSISTANCE TO IMMIGRANTS
“During my law practice, I helped every immigrant that needed help, without pay," said Francis. "I have helped hundreds of cab drivers and waiters and that sort. I don't remember all of their names because I didn't help them for any recognition. It was nice to get thanked every once in a while, but it wasn't on behalf of some charity or some institution because, of course, a lot of these people are too shy to go into a big institution and ask for help."
Francis recalls a time when a waiter at the New York Athletic Club came to him and said: ‘My mother is trapped in Bosnia, and they're killing my family. How can I get her out?' Francis said, “I wrote letters to two U.S. Senators, two Congressmen, and the ambassador and consul general and everybody else in a position who made decisions. I received responses from the Congressmen, Senators, and Ambassador. Later I got letters written by influential friends throughout the world. Finally, I gave a pack of letters to her son who gave it to the woman and told her to give it to the ambassador and the consulate general. She got out."
One day a few years later, a woman wearing a kerchief and an embroidered cap came to Francis's office. “There were about a dozen people, all bearing big fruit baskets, who'd come to thank me," says Francis.
Another time, a New York cab driver came to Francis and said: “I drove you in my cab. You gave me your business card two years ago at La Guardia. My wife and children are in Peshawar in an Afghan refugee camp, and I don't know what to do." Francis responded: “We will get them out. Come see me after work." Francis worked with an immigration specialist and together the two New York lawyers got the Afghans out.
Francis felt a sense of urgency fueled by what the cab driver had told him: When he was carrying his baby out of the place where they lived, the house blew up. “So I thought ‘How amazing! That is why I pushed so hard to get this done so quickly. I got visas for these guys to get out. And what struck me about that case is I never missed a minute. I kept pushing, pushing, pushing - and I don't know what drove me. I don't believe in divine providence. But that was proof. For thanks, he gave me a piece of lapis lazuli."
Francis said that a waiter at the New York Athletic Club told him that his wife died of cancer. “He needed to take care of their two children," said Francis. “So he needed to bring his mother to New York City. I agreed to help bring her back from Vietnam to take care of her grandchildren. The problem was she had no fingerprints due to injuries suffered in the war. So I devised a way to which the immigration service would accept her footprint as proof of identity."
“Philanthropy means investing in the spirit of a person," said Francis. "I've always wanted to invest in promising individuals to make sure that they could manifest their destiny and realize their God-given gifts no matter where they were born and what level they were from."
This impulse started early.
“Thanks to the influence of my parents – both my mother and father did social work – I have a bent for charity and philanthropic endeavors," said Francis. "Beginning my freshman year at Harvard, I enjoyed most working at the Phillip Brooks House, a student-run, public service organization affiliated with the University."
“This might seem a small thing, but the first memory that comes to mind was helping some of the inmates at a local prison carve pumpkins that they donated to local schools. The idea was to get these men to realize that, with their spirit, they could do something good. Then I began to realize that when you take on the responsibility of a man, it is a solemn duty. These people are not replaceable."
Much of Francis's impulse to help others goes back to his journey to Pakistan in 1962 when he attended a classmate's wedding. After the wedding, he traveled on to India and stayed for a time in the luxurious home of the Maharani of Jaipur at the recommendation of another Harvard classmate's father, Pakistan's General Muhammad Musa. While wandering the poorer sections of Jaipur, Francis saw a poor woman desperately pulling food from a dog's mouth. “That image has stayed with me my entire life," said Francis, who also said that the memory fueled a lifelong passion for helping the poor.
When he returned to Harvard for his sophomore year, and for the rest of his life, Francis said that the urge for social status and the trappings of wealth seemed absurd. Now, in his seventies, after a stint in prison, he says, “Looking at the social page in the New York Times, I realize the social world is all trappings. It's all different forms of creating fear and insecurity to organize and control people. So, in my philanthropy, I always go back to the importance of the individual spirit, poor or rich, no matter what their place is in life."
POMO INDIANS
While attending at Hastings Law School in San Francisco in the late 1960s, Francis worked with the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Indian Land to help the Pomo Indians save their reservation in Ukiah, California. “The Army Corps of Engineers were ready to flood the reservation, and three or four of us worked to get Governor Ronald Reagan [1967-1975] to sign an injunction to stop it. We used the influence of the Sierra Club to bring to light the fact that the water that they'd save by flooding the reservation would be sent down to Los Angeles – and more of it would evaporate going from Ukiah to Los Angeles than would be saved."
Francis added, “It wasn't the trees that interested me. It was those Pomo Indians. It was their spirit and drive to protect themselves and keep their reservation lands intact that was so important. I spent a lot of time with the women because the men were often rendered too incapable of action by alcoholism. I remember one woman saying to me that after the [1902 National Indian Lands Reclamation Act] Indians were given private ownership of their lands. This woman explained to me they would sell the land to pay a funeral bill. So, the spirit of those people to protect themselves, that's what moved me to do that work."
Francis also tutored two Sioux Indians in high school and assisted a Cherokee Indian man to gain entrance to college and then law school.
Founded a women's clinic – PREGNANCY HELP
After passing the bar, Francis started working on corporate and antitrust work at the New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher in the early '70s. Frustrated by losing touch with his desire to help the disadvantaged, Francis founded a women's clinic called Pregnancy Help. “It was a little clinic on 14th Street in New York City. It was a nonpolitical, nonreligious, nonprofit attempt to help women to find out if they were pregnant. The clinic gave them a sonogram and then the women could come in and seek to counsel if they wished and we provided information on how to get health care and what to do with their baby." In the beginning, Francis gave clinic $25,000 of his money. “I bought a sonogram machine," he said.
Francis diverged from strict Catholic teaching by directing his clinic to provide condoms. When confronted by a Catholic clergyman, Francis argued: “Our job is to protect life. We have an opportunity to give these women some way to protect themselves because they were just getting off the street. I don't want their life threatened by some deadly disease."
He continued to work with the clinic from the early ‘80s through the late ‘90s.
Served on the boards of medical research organizations and Neuro-Regeneration research organizations
“I served as on the board of the American Hospital in Paris and helped them raise money. My primary interest there was to get French doctors to understand American techniques and to get modern American equipment like dialysis into the hospitals so that it could help diabetics. I helped them to get contributors to fund this equipment and other things they desperately needed. We raised a lot of money. I used my social connections to give a dinner in Paris and that sort of thing. I also was on the Columbia Presbyterian Health Sciences Advisory Council and the executive board of the Institute for Sports Medicine Research. They both arose from my work with the American Hospital in Paris."
THE WAKEMAN AWARD
In the early 1970s, Alan Reich, President of the National Paraplegic Foundation was paralyzed in a diving accident. He partnered with pioneering spinal researcher William Windle to create the William T. Wakeman Award. Wakeman became a paraplegic after his wife shot him during a family argument at their Palm Beach home. Determined to walk or die, he underwent surgery by a physician who promised to cure him of paraplegia. However, William died during the operation. His guilt-ridden widow helped organize a Palm Beach conference in neuro-regeneration and spurred the creation of the Wakeman Award.
“When I got involved with the Wakeman Prize, doctors in the field discouraged posting the award," said Francis. “A doctor at NYU told me they wanted to use the money to fund chairs. I said ‘We only have $10,000 every other year to give for this award. That is not enough to fund a chair.' Working with the Wakeman Award, I came to realize a few things. One, these paralyzed men needed proof that scientists were working for neuro-regeneration and that it was a real possibility. Two, I wanted the Wakeman to connect with the spirit of the men who hoped to walk again someday – and to connect with the spirit of the researchers seeking to find a solution. Back in the early 1970s, few individuals had the guts to support that unrealistic (at that time) objective."
“In some ways," says Francis, “The Wakeman was a courageous enterprise ahead of its time. In fact, the people who won the award in the early years had never won any other award. But they went on to earn even greater distinctions. Dr. Roger Sperry won the Wakeman Research Award, then won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981. Other Wakeman winners include two students of Doctor Stephen Kuffler, a preeminent Hungarian neurophysiologist who died in 1980, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
THE QUAN FELLOWSHIP
In 1981, Dr. Stuart Quan asked Francis to help develop the Quan Fellowship, which offered a $10,000 semi-annual prize to students for their research in neurological science. “Dr. Quan originally funded it," said Francis, “but I helped him organize it into a sustained enterprise and seek ongoing funding."
In the process, Francis became Member of the Board of Directors of the Harvard Medical School Advisory Council for Neurobiology where he worked with Dr. Quan.
Francis established a fast friendship with Dr. Quan. “He was the first Chinese graduate of Harvard Medical School," said Francis. “He told me that when he was in medical school, he walked down the Charles River and contemplated suicide because people thought he was Japanese. His father brought the Peking Opera to San Francisco and founded the Chinese Hospital there. And his mother, although she was born in San Francisco, followed ancient customs. Her feet were bound, and when she would walk, she held Stuart's head as a cane. People would often say to her, ‘What a beautiful child you have.' And she would say, ‘I found him in a garbage can.' What he didn't realize when he was a child, was she was trying to reverse the curse that is put on a child when you compliment them in Chinese culture."
Francis is heartened by continued progress in the field. “The focus on neuro-regeneration has had some success because of innovation in the field. Now there is an experimental treatment in which they freeze the spinal cord immediately after injuries to slow damage and reduce swelling, protecting the spinal cord immediately after the injury," said Francis. "That treatment was first done in Russia and Eastern Europe. One of the researchers whose work I looked at during my involvement with the Wakeman Prize was working on that project."
“Though therapeutic hypothermia has been used in other cases, such as following a cardiac arrest, since the 1970s, it is not a widely used treatment for spinal cord injury," said Dr. Roger Humphries, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Kentucky. The use of hypothermia for spinal cord injuries garnered public attention in 2007 after Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett was treated with it following an injury during a game. Neurologists believe that the cooling may have prevented him from further injury and has aided his ability to come back from a quadriplegic state.
ERICK HAWKINS DANCE FOUNDATION
In the mid-1980s, while working for the Deere Trust, Francis worked on the board of directors of The Erick Hawkins Dance Foundation. “Eric Hawkins was Martha Graham's husband for about 15 minutes," said Francis. “Then he formed his company. He thought that training dancers should not result in injury. And, to make a long story short, we did a few performances. He combined American Indian and classical dance into a new formula."
MEDIA CARES FOUNDATION
In the early 1990s, Francis helped with the Media Cares Foundation, which helped get African American children into schools.
MUSICA RUSSICA FOUNDATION
In 1991 Francis helped found the Musica Russica Foundation. “After the fall of the Soviet Union, I was approached by people to help save Russian Music. Established in 1987, Musica Russica is the largest publisher of Russian choral music outside of Russia. We were very interested in the Kirov-Mariinsky Company in St. Petersburg, whose head was Valery Gergiev, a Russian conductor and opera company director. Over the years, he was a general director and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic and artistic director of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg."
“Now, Gergiev is a rich and powerful conductor making $16 million a year," said Francis. “But back then, they had no money; they had nothing. So I gave the foundation a desk in my office and the conference room in the General Motors building. That foundation helped bring some of the first operas from the Kirov-Mariinsky to the Metropolitan Opera."
Francis explains that his modest organization was a poor match for Gergiev's customary fees and global ambition. “At first, I thought we were just going to save the music, but the Kirov had no funding. So, it turns out we had to save them by raising money here and by getting them to come to the United States and play. But, in the end, we raised money, sent them instruments and antibiotics because many were suffering from pneumonia and tuberculosis. The problem was that we couldn't get enough money to satisfy Valery Gergiev because he wanted millions and millions, and we couldn't raise that much."
“Our contributors were New Yorkers who were very interested in music. Katia Chapin was a good friend of mine, and she got people like Jim Burke, the CEO of Johnson & Johnson from 1976 to 1989, and her husband, the late Schuyler Chapin, who had been Assistant General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera from 1972 to 1976, to donate."
“We also arranged for Gergiev to fly to San Francisco to conduct some music for Gordon Getty Jr., billionaire heir to the Getty fortune, investor and classical music composer. Gergiev was expecting $10 million, and he got $10,000. So, the expectation of the Russians at that time were way, way out of kilter."
VLADIMIR SPIVAKOV INTERNATIONAL CHARITY FOUNDATION
Francis worked with a foundation run by Vladimir Spivakov, one of Russia's eminent violinists and the principal conductor and music director of the Russian National Orchestra.
“Spivakov formed the foundation to help orphans and those who were physically challenged, particularly children from Chernobyl. I was very interested in it because I'd met a little girl who was born after Chernobyl and was one of the first to survive neuroblastoma. I tried to get Sloan Kettering in New York City to see these children, but that mission failed because we couldn't get through the Russian bureaucracy."
LAURA PELS THEATRE FOUNDATION
“We I tried very hard to get African American writers and directors, to produce plays," he said. "Their first production in New York was a 2004 play called Intimate Apparel written by Lynn Nottage and starring Viola Davis. The Foundation also brought back Arthur Miller's play The Crucible to the stage."
PERSONAL PRO BONO ASSISTANCE TO IMMIGRANTS
“During my law practice, I helped every immigrant that needed help, without pay," said Francis. "I have helped hundreds of cab drivers and waiters and that sort. I don't remember all of their names because I didn't help them for any recognition. It was nice to get thanked every once in a while, but it wasn't on behalf of some charity or some institution because, of course, a lot of these people are too shy to go into a big institution and ask for help."
Francis recalls a time when a waiter at the New York Athletic Club came to him and said: ‘My mother is trapped in Bosnia, and they're killing my family. How can I get her out?' Francis said, “I wrote letters to two U.S. Senators, two Congressmen, and the ambassador and consul general and everybody else in a position who made decisions. I received responses from the Congressmen, Senators, and Ambassador. Later I got letters written by influential friends throughout the world. Finally, I gave a pack of letters to her son who gave it to the woman and told her to give it to the ambassador and the consulate general. She got out."
One day a few years later, a woman wearing a kerchief and an embroidered cap came to Francis's office. “There were about a dozen people, all bearing big fruit baskets, who'd come to thank me," says Francis.
Another time, a New York cab driver came to Francis and said: “I drove you in my cab. You gave me your business card two years ago at La Guardia. My wife and children are in Peshawar in an Afghan refugee camp, and I don't know what to do." Francis responded: “We will get them out. Come see me after work." Francis worked with an immigration specialist and together the two New York lawyers got the Afghans out.
Francis felt a sense of urgency fueled by what the cab driver had told him: When he was carrying his baby out of the place where they lived, the house blew up. “So I thought ‘How amazing! That is why I pushed so hard to get this done so quickly. I got visas for these guys to get out. And what struck me about that case is I never missed a minute. I kept pushing, pushing, pushing - and I don't know what drove me. I don't believe in divine providence. But that was proof. For thanks, he gave me a piece of lapis lazuli."
Francis said that a waiter at the New York Athletic Club told him that his wife died of cancer. “He needed to take care of their two children," said Francis. “So he needed to bring his mother to New York City. I agreed to help bring her back from Vietnam to take care of her grandchildren. The problem was she had no fingerprints due to injuries suffered in the war. So I devised a way to which the immigration service would accept her footprint as proof of identity."