Season 1: The Extraordinary One
Danny Thomas
In 1962, the survival rate for childhood cancer patients was less than 20 percent. It was more or less a death sentence to be diagnosed with cancer as a child. In fact, acute lymphoblastic leukemia which is a blood cancer, had a survival rate of 4 percent in 1962. Today, the survival rate of ALL is 95% and survival rate for children with cancer across the board is 80 percent. The reason for this dramatic shift really comes down to a single institution that declared in 1962 no child should die in the dawn of their life. That institution is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
It is not hyperbole when we say that St. Jude is the most important institution in the world when it comes to saving children’s lives. Everyone in the world has heard of St. Jude, but not many people know the origin. St. Jude exists because in June 1940, a 28-year old struggling entertainer with a 10th-grade education, living in Chicago with two young children, no job and no clear path in life found himself in a small Catholic church at a 500am weekday Mass just looking for a little hope and a little help.
In this lowest of low moments, this man prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus—patron saint of hopeless causes— “Help me find my way in life. Help me make sense of it all and prosper my work and my life.” If he could do that, this man would build a shrine to St. Jude where the poor, the helpless and the hopeless may come for comfort and aid. The man in that church was Danny Thomas, who not too many years after this, was one of the most famous actors and entertainers in all of America.