PRINCETON: Lincoln Republicans plan dinner

   The Republican Association of Princeton will host a Lincoln Day Dinner to celebrate the life and achievements of America’s 16th and first Republican president. The event will commemorate the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. The dinner will be held in Princeton at Jasna Polana on Friday, Feb. 20.
   The guest of honor and featured speaker will be biotech executive and Republican leader John Crowley, currently the honorary chairman of Building the New Majority, a new organization that seeks to identify, develop and empower local candidates. Mr. Crowley graduated with a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and received an M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School in 1997. He is a Princeton resident.
   In 1998, two of Mr. Crowley’s children, Megan and Patrick, were diagnosed with a fatal neuromuscular disorder. At the time, he worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb in senior management but, frustrated with the slow pace of research on the disease, he left the firm and became CEO of Novazyme, which later merged with the Genzyme Corp.
   In January 2003, Megan and Patrick received Genzyme’s enzyme replacement therapy for the disease. Mr. Crowley credits the experimental trial with saving his children’s lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Geeta Anand published a book in 2006 about Mr. Crowley titled “The Cure”. Harrison Ford will star in the CBS film “Crowley,” which is based on the cure of the Crowley children and scheduled for release in late 2009.
   Tickets for the event are $110 per person. Advance ticket purchase is required. To purchase tickets, provide sponsorship or obtain additional information, call 609-497-0740 or write to [email protected].