'Gentile' proved the power of one

As scores of his former law students have attested this week, Michael Goldsmith, who died Sunday at 58 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was tireless in telling them to be tireless.

"Try hard and you can achieve something that seemed impossible," was his mantra as he encouraged his students to become "can do" lawyers and to believe in "the power of one."

No one can say Goldsmith didn't practice what he preached.

As the wake of his death sharpens the focus of his life, it's encouraging to reflect on how a Jewish lawyer from New York moved to the one place on Earth he could be called a "Gentile" and became a BYU professor everyone wanted to be taught by.

And it's downright inspiring to reflect on how that same professor, stricken in the prime of his life by a so-far incurable disease, showed everyone what he meant by "can do."

Starting with a committee of one — himself — Goldsmith managed to not only finally unite Major League Baseball in the fight against ALS, some 70 years after Lou Gehrig made the disease infamous, but he was also able to bring together the disparate organizations battling for a cure.

The story is already legend in the ALS world: How Goldsmith, after being diagnosed with ALS in 2006, penned a guest editorial for Newsweek magazine that challenged Major League Baseball to come together to raise ALS awareness on July 4, 2009 — the 70th anniversary of Gehrig's legendary "Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth" speech that he gave in Yankee Stadium on the day he retired in 1939.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and each of the 30 big league clubs responded, organizing the 4ALS crusade (4 was Lou Gehrig's number) that was kicked off when Goldsmith himself threw out the first pitch this past Independence Day at Yankee Stadium.

Joining this bandwagon were the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the ALS Therapy Development Institute, Project A.L.S. and the ALS Association — the four main national organizations heretofore independently involved in ALS research.

"It marked the first time all four of these groups joined one project," said Lance Slaughter, the 4ALS project manager for the ALS Association. "The power of one man brought a whole disease community together."