Carol Kleiner, longtime ALS advocate, rower, and volunteer, has died at 69

Carol Kleiner, 69, of Blue Bell, longtime advocate and fundraiser for research into the cause and cure of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cofounder of the Whitemarsh Boat Club, rower, die-hard Phillies fan, school volunteer, and optimistic inspiration to family and friends, died Thursday, Aug. 28, of ALS at her home.

A tennis player as a young woman and a rower at 50, Mrs. Kleiner was diagnosed with ALS in 2013, when she was 57. She spent the next 12 years raising more than $2 million for ALS research, spreading the alarm about the incurable illness known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and, all the while, caring for her husband, son, and two daughters as they simultaneously cared for her.

“I was not about to sit and wallow away in pity,” Mrs. Kleiner said in a 2014 award-winning video made by her daughter Meredith. “I’m going to live my life and do what I do, and help those who I can.”

Her husband, Bob, said: “She said she was happy to the end.”

Mrs. Kleiner’s signature fundraising campaign is Carol’s Crew. Through their Miles that Matter program, she and her rowing teammates at the Whitemarsh Boat Club and Hines Rowing Center collect donations for miles they row. She also enlisted fellow fundraisers at the local A Date With a Plate night to support ALS research through their pay-to-play cocktail parties that feature innovative table settings.

She and her family joined the New York-based Project ALS after her diagnosis, and they were honored by the nonprofit in 2017 for their fundraising and community outreach efforts. “Their work ethic, bravery, and generosity have pushed Project ALS research to new heights,” Meredith Estess, Project ALS president, said at the time. “They have united their entire community in the fight against ALS.”

» READ MORE: Carol Kleiner on ALS and baseball

In 2015, the local Date With a Plate raised $365,000, and officials at Project ALS said on Facebook: “These monies are a testament to our dear friend Carol Kleiner and to the strength, talent, and love in this inspiring community.”

In 2016, she and her family established the Kleiner Family Research Initiative at Project ALS. It funds testing of promising treatments, and researchers, in her honor, appended the name Kleiner to some of their most encouraging drugs. “They are a formidable force,” Estess, of Project ALS, said in 2016. “The Kleiners inspire us to higher heights in the search for treatments now.”

Her fundraising success was featured on a local TV broadcast and Project ALS video. She wrote an opinion piece about ALS awareness for The Inquirer in 2014 and said: “We must instill in our politicians a real sense of urgency, because one day, each of us could be affected, either with our own diagnosis or that of a loved one.”

Mrs. Kleiner was a “founding mother” of the nonprofit Whitemarsh Boat Club in 2005. She was its first director of fundraising and events, and one of the doubles boats bears her name.

“There’s just something magical about being in a boat,” she said in her daughter’s video. “The minute you push away from the dock, the worries and the problems of the day are gone.”

She was a longtime Phillies fan and baseball enthusiast, and she and her son, Andrew, visited 18 stadiums around the country. She was active with the Phillies’ ALS fundraising efforts and, to her husband’s dismay, even bid against team owner John Middleton in a memorabilia auction.

“She was an unbelievably dedicated fan,” her son said.

She was president of the parent teacher association at Germantown Academy when her children attended and helped the rowing teams become varsity sports in 2008. In the neighborhood, the kids liked to hang at her house. “She was like their second mother,” her husband said. “She made everybody feel at home.”

Carol Ann Corso was born May 30, 1956. She grew up in the Hiltonia neighborhood of Trenton, got a tennis scholarship for college, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

She met Bob Kleiner at a college party, and their first date was celebrating on New Year’s Eve as 1976 became 1977. They married in 1979, and had daughters Meredith and Jennifer, and a son, Andrew. They lived in Baltimore and Atlanta before settling in Cheltenham and then Blue Bell in 1989.

Friends called Mrs. Kleiner “remarkable” and “supportive” in tributes. One said: “She shared so much of herself to me and was an amazing source of strength.”

She was bubbly and outgoing, her husband said. She encountered former Phillies star Pete Rose at an autograph session, sat down beside him, and they chatted as he greeted people in line. “She could strike up a conversation with anyone,” her husband said.

They had season tickets to the Phillies for years, and she waited all night outside the ticket office at Veterans Stadium for good seats to the 1993 World Series. She enjoyed horror movies, and her favorite quip was: It is what it is.

“It’s amazing,” her husband said, “how many people who came to help her during her illness said that she wound up helping them.”

In addition to her husband and children, Mrs. Kleiner is survived by four grandchildren, two sisters, one brother, and other relatives.

A service and celebration of her life are to be at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, at Joseph Levine & Sons, 1002 Skippack Pike, Blue Bell, Pa. 19422.

Donations in her name may be made to Project ALS, 2585 Broadway, Suite 202, New York, N.Y. 10025.