Josh Lipowsky was hospitalized 10 times between the ages of 5 and 14 after having a brain tumor removed, and through it all, his mother, Trudy, never left his side.
Now, at age 42, and for the second time in 10 years, the State College Area High School and Penn State graduate will be running the New York City Marathon on Nov. 4. When he does, he’ll be honoring the memory of his mother, a pillar of the State College community who died in 2021, and raising money for the nonprofit Chai Lifeline to provide support for children facing medical crises and their families.
“I wanted to do something to honor my mother’s memory,” Josh Lipowsky said. “Given my own medical history of being in and out of the hospital, the work that Chai Lifeline does just really spoke to me and resonated with me. Throughout all of my own childhood traumas, my mother was by my side, staying overnight in the hospital with me, holding my hand through various terrifying procedures for a 6-year-old, or someone of any age.
“Because of my experiences, I feel like I can relate to what many of the children of Chai Lifeline are experiencing. So anything I can do through this campaign I know is going to a fantastic cause.”
Trudy Edelist Lipowsky’s parents were Holocaust survivors and she was born in a displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen, Germany. When she was a young child, her family was sent to live in New Jersey, and education became a crucial part of her life.
She earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in pathology from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she met her husband, Herb Lipowsky, who was a post-doctoral fellow at the college and later joined the physiology faculty.
Josh was born in 1981, and at the age of 5 he was diagnosed with a cystic cerebellar astrocytoma. He had surgery for it to be removed, but two months later was back in Columbia University Irving Medical Center with a severe build-up of fluid in his brain. He would be back in the hospital two more times before his sixth birthday and four more before he turned 14.
“Trudy stayed in the room with him every night. She would sleep in a lounge chair by his bedside,” Herb Lipowsky said. “She just stayed with him 24 hours a day. You couldn’t pry her away.”
In 1989, Herb took a position at Penn State as head of the bioengineering program, and Trudy retired from her medical career to be able to be home for Josh. With the move to State College, however, Trudy also soon became a dedicated community volunteer.
She served on the boards of State College Hadassah and Penn State Hillel, headed programming for Congregation Brit Shalom, organized and judged the annual Holocaust Writing Contest in State College area schools as a member of the American Association of University Women and regularly spoke at local schools about the Holocaust and her family’s experience. She also served on the auction committee for the annual WPSU Connoisseur’s Dinner and the board of the Nittany Valley Symphony, and always made sure she was available for volunteer and chaperone opportunities at Josh’s schools.
“She was just pretty much involved in everything but still found time to be a mom,” Josh said.
Josh, meanwhile, grew up to be healthy — and more active than he ever could have imagined.
“I never thought I would be running a marathon, especially as a child,” he said. “I was not the most active child. I did not really play sports in high school. I was president of the chess club. That was the major athletic activity I was involved with. Little League one year and swim team one year. I was not a big runner.”
After graduating from State High in 1999 and Penn State in 2003 with degrees in journalism and Jewish studies, he worked as an assistant editor of State College Magazine and editor of Pennsylvania Business Central. Three years later, he moved to New Jersey and spent five years as assistant editor at the New Jersey Jewish Standard. He earned a master’s degree in global studies from NYU and went on to become a senior research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, a nonpartisan international nonprofit that works to combat the threat of extremist ideologies.
It was during his time at the Jewish Standard, though, that his interest in running first sparked. In 2009, he was assigned to cover a 5k race being held by a local Jewish Community Center.
“I went to cover that and ended up running it as well,” Josh said. “I ran with a friend and we decided to do a 10k after that, and then we started building up to half-marathons and just continued on. I now have an entire drawer full of racing T-shirts.”
In 2012, he decided to run in the New York City Marathon. He used the opportunity to raise money for The Blue Card, a charity that provides financial assistance to Holocaust survivors living below the poverty line.
The 2012 marathon was canceled because of Hurricane Sandy, but Josh’s registration was deferred to 2013. He did another round of fundraising for The Blue Card and at last ran the marathon that November.
“We were so thankful that he was able to do that with what he had been through as a 5-year-old and all his follow up procedures,” Herb said. “We’re just so grateful that he’s been able to function as well as he has… I was amazed because that type of surgery can have an effect on your coordination, your dexterity. He seemed to have come out of it without any neural defects and it was amazing that he had the constitution to get into jogging and marathon running.”
Josh continued running after that, doing half-marathons and other shorter races. He gets back to State College every other month, noting that he still gets all his sneakers at Rapid Transit, and in July he ran the 10-mile Sue Crowe Memorial Arts Festival Race.
But he didn’t think he’d run another marathon.
“After my mother passed in 2021, I started thinking about what I could do in her memory,” he said. “So the idea of running for a charity in the New York Marathon came up and I decided to run with it.”
Josh has already surpassed his goal of raising $6,000 for Chai Lifeline, an organization with which he felt a kinship because of his own childhood medical issues. With more than $7,100 raised as of Oct. 10, the new goal is at least $8,000. (To donate, visit teamlifeline.org/NYC23/Joshlipowsky.)
Donations go to a range of services and activities for children and their families, sponsoring counseling sessions, a child’s birthday party in the hospital, emergency financial assistance, meal deliveries, transportation to medical appointments and much more.
Chai Lifeline’s flagship program is Camp Simcha, which provides a camp experience in the Catskill Mountains for children and teens with cancer and other blood disorders in all phases of treatment.
“That is something truly amazing, to just give some respite to these children and help them feel like a normal child again,” Josh said.
He hopes that his campaign will not only raise money now for Chai Lifeline, but also awareness for the future.
“All the funds raised go directly to these programs,” he said. “Anything that this campaign can do to not just raise funds now but to put this organization on people’s radars and just spread the word about it so that people keep it in mind in the future when they consider their giving.”
Herb is proud of his son’s efforts and said he was “ecstatic” to learn he would be running in memory of Trudy.
“I think his tribute to my wife is amazing and wonderful,” he said. “He was her little treasure. Her whole life revolved around him.”
