Going strong

As supporters of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, many of you know the story of Danny Thomas praying to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes. Danny was a struggling entertainer who asked for help finding his way in life and promised to build a shrine to St. Jude.

This year — as we mark the 60^th anniversary of ALSAC, the organization Danny founded to raise the funds and public awareness needed to build St. Jude, and then to maintain it — I am reminded anew of how bold, how audacious, how daring Danny was in keeping that promise.

Because this would not be just any shrine. This would be a research hospital dedicated to treating children — children whom others had written off as incurable.

Not only that, Danny was determined that no family who ever turned to St. Jude would face the financial hardships too often associated with treating cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Danny dared to declare that families would never receive a bill from St. Jude for the travel needed to get to St. Jude, nor for housing or food once they arrived. And, most of all, not for the groundbreaking treatment their children received.