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Climbing to Conquer Disease
Alumna grandmother scales heights against MS, Parkinson’s
To the average person, mountains are obstacles, impediments. To Aventura grandmother Iloo Gruder, B.Ed. ’57, mountains are high-altitude, philanthropic test beds that allow her to help the Miller School Department of Neurology.
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| By climbing some of the world’s highest mountains, Iloo Gruder has raised research funds for the Department of Neurology. |
In October, Gruder, 72, visited the tiny Asian country of Bhutan, wedged between China and India, to conquer a 14,000-foot Himalayan peak. The climb raised money to help find cures for multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, illnesses that impact members of Gruder’s immediate family.
In the days when she was a harried homemaker rearing four daughters, Gruder suppressed a secret yen to span the globe and scale its most imposing mountains. Why fixate on such things when dirty diapers and PTA meetings beckon?
But with her daughters grown and the nest empty, Gruder’s been making up for lost time.
She’s been working in rarefied air to raise money for medical philanthropy since 1996, the year she scaled Africa’s highest mountain, 19,340-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The Kilimanjaro expedition let Gruder finally liberate her inner adventurer, while generating $25,000 to support research on multiple sclerosis, an illness daughter Cindy Yonover was diagnosed with the previous year.
“When I came down from Kilimanjaro, I said, ‘Boy, that was pretty easy,’” Gruder recalls of the climb, made even more memorable by a bottle of Dom Perignon consumed on the mountain’s summit.
Since then, Gruder has looked down on the world from Mount Blanc in the Alps, Peru’s Machu Picchu, Mount Fuji in Japan, and the base camp of Mount Everest, which sits at 18,370 feet. Each climb raised money targeting multiple sclerosis, and each time Gruder wore a lucky red windbreaker and drank celebratory champagne.
To prepare for Bhutan, Gruder trained in a Miami-area gym six days a week. She also worked hard to persuade friends and family to “buy her steps” to raise money against multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s. Gruder’s husband, Robert, was diagnosed with the latter disease in 2006.
“I sent out over 300 letters for Bhutan,” says Gruder, a Cleveland native who earned an education degree at the University of Miami. “I told people that I was at it again, and I wanted them to buy my steps. That was the gist of my letter.”
For $50, contributors got 10,000 of Gruder’s steps, a distance she says roughly equals four miles. One hundred dollars reeled in 20,000 steps, and $200 netted 30,000.
Her efforts raised $17,000 for the Department of Neurology, where her husband is undergoing treatment.
“I said Bhutan would probably be my last climb,” Gruder reflects, safely back in her Aventura apartment. “But now that I’m home I’m thinking, ‘Where am I going next?’ I haven’t told my husband yet!”
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