Marla Gilson, a Capitol Hill presence for decades with stints working for Hadassah, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and several Democratic Party campaigns, has died.

Gilson, who had acute leukemia, died Saturday after entering hospice.

Last winter, hundreds of Gilson’s friends, colleagues and Jews who had heard about her illness registered as bone marrow donors through drives organized on her behalf. A bone marrow donor was identified for Gilson before the screenings took place, but the screenings went forward nevertheless in her honor.

“She would walk on hot coals for the Jewish people, and she has never been shy about speaking out on behalf of others,” Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder of The Israel Project and a friend of Gilson’s, told JTA in March.

Gilson’s disease became common knowledge after her latest employer, the Association of Jewish Aging Services, fired her after she asked to be allowed to work from home through the summer of 2011 as she recovered from a bone marrow transplant that had been scheduled for April.

Friends, colleagues and acquaintances in Washington’s Jewish community rallied to Gilson’s bedside to support her in her fight to retain her job and also to champion the cause registering Ashkenazi Jews as potential bone marrow donors.

Gilson did not allow friends to visit her at the end of her life, preferring that they remember her as she was, Mizrahi said in an email Sunday.

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. Make a matched gift today.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$120 $180 $360 OTHER AMOUNT