Fund Retired 2020
The Olive Branch Fund: A Thisbe and Noah Scott Legacy Advised Fund was founded by Franklin residents John and Laurian Scott in honor of their two children, Elenna “Thisbe” and “Noah” McArthur Scott. John and Laurian’s whole world began to change when their beautiful daughter, Thisbe, was 17 months old. Thisbe began suffering from a disease that caused her nerve cells to die, no longer sending messages to the muscles, telling them to move. Thisbe became paralyzed piece by piece and spent the last 18 months of her short life suffering, which she bore with unbelievable grace and fortitude. Her death was caused by the motor neuron disease Brown-Vialetto-Van Laere (BVVL) on April 30, 2007. Just one month after Thisbe’s death, her healthy, precious brother Noah, just 10 months old at the time, started showing one of the initial symptoms of BVVL: a droopy eyelid. He too started the degeneration, full of love and purity of spirit. The disease took his life nine months later, on April 9, 2008. Through a profound brokenness, the Scotts have begun the mission to raise awareness, fund research and provide support to families of all forms of pediatric motor neuron diseases. In this way, they hope to honor the amazing little lives that they were graced with in Thisbe and Noah — and to show that they mattered, not just to their parents, but to the world.
