Rebekah P, age 4, Noah M, age unknown, Katelyn, age 3, Clinton, age 5, Katelyn, age 5, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Peter M, age 2 Pineoblastoma. This list is a small portion of kids and their ages along with something at the end of their names I am set on getting rid of. At the end of their names is the disease that keeps these children from having a happy and wonderful childhood.
There is a place that these children can find the best care around, and that place is a miracle of hope, it is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It’s founder Danny Thomas wanted to create a place where children could go to recieve the very best care for their illnesses without the fear of ever being turned away do to finances. By the blessings of God, I have never had to admitt one of my children into St. Jude, but each month I recieve a letter from a child or parent of a child who is or has been a patient there.
I believe in this establishment and I more so believe in the work that they do with these children day in and day out. Children do not pick their disease that may possibly end their lives, and these cancer’s hit with no respect of income or age or race.
My plea here is that each person that would read this post would take a moment to check out the website, I will have it listed at the end of my post and would appreciate everyone taking a tour through the site at the amazing work that the people of St. Jude have done and are working to do in the future. I know everyone wants a donation for something these days and with the economy people have no choice but to make cuts on non essential costs. All I ask is that you take a look at the site and pray about your options.
Here is the website: www.stjude.orgIt only takes a couple of minutes and I am 100% sure that your heart will be touched. Danny Thomas made a promise for this hospital and thanks to donations from across the nation and the world, this promise has held true. Please do not be upset if I sent this to a group set for other purpose’s, I just wanted to get the word out.
Danny’s Promise
More than 70 years ago, Danny Thomas, then a struggling young entertainer with a baby on the way, visited a Detroit church and was so moved during the Mass, he placed his last $7 in the collection box. When he realized what he’d done, Danny Thomas prayed for a way to pay the looming hospital bills. The next day, he was offered a small part that would pay 10 times the amount he’d given to the church. Danny Thomas had experienced the power of prayer.
Two years later, Danny Thomas had achieved moderate acting success in Detroit, but he was struggling to take his career to the next level. Once again, he turned to the church. Praying to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes, Danny Thomas asked the saint to “help me find my way in life, and I will build you a shrine.”
His career took a turn for the better, and soon he moved his family to Chicago to pursue career offers. A few years later, at another turning point in his life, Danny Thomas visited a church and remembered his pledge to St. Jude. Again he prayed to St. Jude and repeated his pledge to build a shrine to the saint if he would show him the way.
In the years that followed, Danny Thomas’ career flourished through films and television, and he became an internationally known entertainer. He remembered his pledge to build a shrine to St. Jude.
In the early 1950s, Danny Thomas began discussing with friends what concrete form his vow might take. Gradually, the idea of a children’s hospital, possibly in Memphis, Tenn., took shape. In 1955, Danny Thomas and a group of Memphis businessmen who had agreed to help support his dream seized on the idea of creating a unique research hospital devoted to curing catastrophic diseases in children. More than just a treatment facility, this would be a research center for the children of the world.
Danny Thomas started raising money for his vision of St. Jude in the early 1950s. By 1955, the local business leaders who had joined his cause began area fundraising efforts, supplementing Danny Thomas’ benefit shows that brought scores of major entertainment stars to Memphis. Often accompanied by his wife, Rose Marie, Danny Thomas crisscrossed the United States by car talking about his dream and raising funds at meetings and benefits. The pace was so hectic that Danny Thomas and his wife once visited 28 cities in 32 days. Although Danny Thomas and his friends raised the money to build the hospital, they now faced the daunting task of funding its annual operation.
To solve this problem, Danny Thomas turned to his fellow Americans of Arabic-speaking heritage. Believing deeply that these Americans should, as a group, thank the United States for the gifts of freedom given their parents, Danny Thomas also felt the support of St. Jude would be a noble way of honoring his immigrant forefathers who had come to America.
Danny Thomas’ request struck a responsive chord. In 1957, 100 representatives of the Arab-American community met in Chicago to form ALSAC® with a sole purpose of raising funds for the support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Since that time, with national headquarters in Memphis and regional offices throughout the United States, ALSAC has assumed full responsibility for all the hospital’s fundraising efforts, raising hundreds of millions annually through benefits and solicitation drives among Americans of all ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds. Today, ALSAC is the nation’s second largest health-care charity and is supported by the efforts of more than 1 million volunteers nationwide.
Through striking improvements in the care of pediatric leukemias and numerous forms of solid tumors, St. Jude-which now has a daily operating cost of nearly $1.5 million-has brought about improved health care for children all over the world.
From a promise of “Help me find my way in life, and I will build you a shrine” to the fulfillment of his dream, Danny Thomas lived to see his little hospital become an international beacon of hope for the catastrophically ill children of the world. The founder of St. Jude and ALSAC died on February 6, 1991, just two days after joining patients, parents and employees to celebrate the hospital’s 29th anniversary. He was laid to rest in a family crypt at the Danny Thomas/ALSAC Pavilion on the grounds of the hospital. On July 12, 2000, his wife, Rose Marie, passed away and now lies with her beloved husband in the hospital’s Memorial Garden. Today, their children, Marlo, Terre and Tony, carry on their parents’ work and remain a driving force in fulfilling their father’s mission. Danny Thomas is gone, but his dream lives on.
Danny’s Promise is property of www.stjude.org
