By Denise Watson Batts
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 10, 2010
Sonny Lacks is known for his smile. Wide and welcoming, it’s a feature that others tell him he shares with his mother.
He wishes he knew that for himself, but he was only 4 when she died.
On a recent Monday afternoon, Sonny and his older brother, Lawrence, sat at a dining room table in Baltimore and examined sketches of what will be their mother’s tombstone. They’ve never had enough money for one. Finally, after all these years, a gift will allow their mother to be remembered as they want her to be.
Lawrence looked at the images but said little. He doesn’t like talking about the mother he lost when he was 16.
“Don’t know why; I never could,” he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his moist eyes. “I just can’t.”
The course of their lives changed in 1951 when their mother visited what was then Johns Hopkins Hospital, just 20 minutes down the road from where her boys now live. It was there that doctors discovered her strange illness and removed mysterious cells from her body.
The sons are one legacy of Henrietta Lacks – a poor woman from the tobacco fields of south-central Virginia. The other is this: Her cells are still multiplying ferociously nearly six decades after her death. They have led to medical miracles such as the vaccine for polio and have produced millions of dollars in revenue for others.
The family’s great loss has become the world’s great gain.
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