Any golfers in the York, Pennsylvania area? Devin O’Connor is hosting a golf tournament to benefit EHE Research this summer. If you don’t golf, come out and enjoy a BBQ dinner, silent auction, and other raffles. Delaney and I are going and we would love to fill a table or two with our EHE family members!

Mandy O’Connor

Mandy Elizabeth O’Connor was born in Seoul, South Korea, but became the daughter of Paul and Virginia Markel just months later and moved to York County, Pennsylvania. She would humorously say she was a southern Pennsylvania girl trapped in an Asian’s body, and when she became an O’Connor when she married her husband Devin in 2010, she would tell people, “I’m Irish, can’t you tell?” 

She was passionate about many things including landscape design, her profession, and numerous hobbies including cooking, gardening, photography, yoga, traveling, music, fishing, and much more. But it was her family and friends whom she was most passionate. 

Mandy was diagnosed with EHE in 2003, and fought the disease for more than a decade. She loved birthdays and helped so many others realize that birthdays are to be celebrated, not dreaded, as too many don’t get enough of them. 

Mandy passed away April 5th, 2015, at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the young age of 31. But in heaven, everyday is like a birthday.