Dr. Yangja Legg, 65, devoted to husband's fight against cancer
When pathologist Merle A. Legg was diagnosed with stomach cancer, he knew his chances of living much longer were slim. Stomach cancer was his life's work. Yet against the advice of many colleagues he chose an aggressive path of treatment.
He had a secret weapon in his fight against the disease: his wife, Yangja (Jung), also a pathologist, who cared for him with great devotion. And against the odds, he lived another 17 years until his death in March 2006.
"It is no exaggeration to say that her tender loving care and their mutual emotional support made a big difference," said Dr. Karoly Balogh, staff pathologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where Dr. Merle Legg had trained a generation of surgical pathologists, including his future wife. "She lived for him and he for her."
Yangja Legg died Sunday when her car went off Route 124, or Mountain Road, in Jaffrey, N.H. on her way to church. She was 65. Dr. Legg's sister, Youngsun Jung of Brookline, Mass., said the family believes Dr. Legg suffered a heart attack or a stroke when her car went off the road. Dr. Legg had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in September and had completed chemotherapy treatments, her sister said.
She had been doing well, said her stepdaughter, Marti L. Christophe of Fair Haven, N.J., and "was looking forward to a [church] retreat to Scotland in September."
Merle Legg and Yangja Jung met when she was a resident student of his at what was then New England Deaconess Hospital. He was a widower with young children. His wife, Mary-Anna, had died in 1974.
The couple married in 1975. They lived in Needham and Dover prior to moving to Jaffrey in 1991.
"Yangja and my father were like two peas in a pod," said Christophe.
Their dedication to each other was obvious not only to their friends but was written about in a book three years ago.
In his "The Anatomy of Hope," Dr. Jerome E. Groopman, chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, tells the story of the Leggs, using the fictitious names George and Eunha Griffin.
"Yangja was definitely the sort of foundation and support for him through his struggle and survival," said Groopman in a telephone interview.
Groopman quotes Merle Legg in the book as saying of his wife, "She had this sixth sense that I would be cured. I didn't. My survival has made her more devout, almost mystical. She was always convinced that I would live."
Though the Leggs knew "the odds were very long," Groopman said in the telephone interview, "Yangja had this profound belief that he would be cured, and I think it was of tremendous importance to him to endure."
At the time of her husband's death, Yangja Legg recalled in the Globe how she had viewed his biopsied tissue through a microscope and confirmed her own fears of the seriousness of his illness. She said then that "at the time, only 2 to 3 percent [of such cases] would survive for six months."
But for 17 years after his diagnosis, she said, "Merle led a normal life, traveling, lecturing, and tending his garden."
During the years when his cancer seemed under control, the couple traveled, especially to Asian countries, and set up a medical exchange with Xi'an Medical University in China.
Dr. Legg was born in South Korea, the daughter of Jaeyong and Chundo (Kim) Jung. She graduated from Pusan National University in Korea and came to this country to do her residency, her sister said. She first interned at Fairview General Hospital in Cleveland, then did a residency at Mallory Institute of Pathology at Boston City Hospital.
Dr. Legg worked for six months at Faulkner Hospital and worked in gynecological pathology at the former Boston Hospital for Women before becoming a resident at Deaconess, where she met Merle Legg.
When Dr. Legg finished her Deaconess residency, she went to work at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Jamaica Plain and also served as chief of surgical pathology at Boston University Medical School, her sister said.
Dr. Balogh, the Leggs's longtime friend and colleague, said that Dr. Legg pulled back from her work after her husband was diagnosed.
"They had a very harmonious marriage," he said, "Yangja made it a point to be wife and stepmother first."
The couple loved gardening and created beautiful oriental gardens with rhododendrons, unusual conifers, and tree peonies.
She took on a meaningful challenge in Jaffrey, said the Rev. Deborah Hill, pastor of the First Church in Jaffrey: "writing and talking to people currently battling cancer and giving them a sense of purpose."
She also loved to sing, and her soprano voice was an asset to the choir of the First Church in Jaffrey. She was heading there to sing Sunday morning when she died.
In addition to her sister and stepdaughter, Dr. Legg leaves another stepdaughter, Marianne of Edmonds, Wash.; three stepsons, James F. of Wrentham, Walter A. of King George, Va., and Stephen D. of Denver; two other sisters, Inja Im of Pusan, Korea, and Insook Park of Seoul; two brothers, Moonsung Jung of Seoul, and Youngchun Jung of Pusan; and six stepgrandchildren.
A memorial service will be held today at 2 p.m. in First Church in Jaffrey. 