Danny Thomas and St. Jude

Contents

1. A struggling entertainer
2. The vow
3. Fame on radio, film and television
4. Choosing Memphis and a purpose
5. Raising the money to build it
6. ALSAC and the Arab American community
7. The opening and the families who never pay
8. Honors, death and the record

Born and raised in Lebanon, Mike Kobeissi came to the United States at 18, and the story of Danny Thomas, a son of Lebanese immigrants, is the story of a private vow turned into a public institution. It unfolds in steps. A struggling performer prays for direction and promises a shrine in return. Success arrives. He decides what the shrine should be, chooses a city and a medical purpose, raises the money to build it, and then asks the community of his parents to fund its running costs for good. Each step left a record, and the records do not always agree.

A struggling entertainer

Thomas was born in 1912 in Deerfield, Michigan, the fifth of 10 children of Lebanese immigrants, according to the Horatio Alger Association’s profile, and as a boy sold candy in a burlesque theater, where he decided to become a comedian.⁴ A Los Angeles Times appreciation published after his death counts him the fifth of nine, and adds that the family moved to Toledo, Ohio, where his father opened a candy store.¹ The name he performed under came later: he began as Amos Jacobs, a version of a birth name the Alger profile gives as Amos Jacobs Kairouz and the National Shrine of Saint Jude as Muzyad Amos Yakhoob.⁶

The vow

As a young performer he was short of work, and his first child was on the way. St. Jude’s founder page tells of a Detroit church where he placed his last $7 in the collection, prayed for a way to meet the coming hospital bills, and was offered a small part the next day that paid ten times as much.³ Two years later, still stuck, he prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of hopeless causes, to help him find his way in life, and promised to build the saint a shrine.³ The shrine’s own account dates his devotion to the spring of 1940, when a Detroit stagehand credited prayers to St. Jude for his wife’s recovery.⁶ Success then nearly erased the promise. After late night shows in Chicago he went to early Mass at St. Clement Church, and there he found a leaflet about the novenas held at the National Shrine of St. Jude on the city’s southeast side; reading it, he realized he had forgotten his earlier prayers, and he resolved to show his thanks.⁶

Figure

A career in four dates

born in Deerfield, Michigan, to Lebanese immigrants

1912

first radio work in Detroit

1932

Make Room for Daddy goes on the air

1953

Congressional Gold Medal for his work with St. Jude

1983

Fame on radio, film and television

The turn came quickly. He began on radio in Detroit in 1932 and took the name Danny Thomas after moving to Chicago in 1940, the Alger profile records.⁴ A booking at the 5100 Club on Chicago’s north side made him a nightclub draw, and a later engagement at the Club Martinique in New York carried him into the big time.⁶ Films followed, among them I’ll See You in My Dreams and a remake of The Jazz Singer, and then television: Make Room for Daddy went on the air in 1953.⁴ The Times credited the show, in which he played an often absent entertainer trying to keep order at home, with making him a national figure over an 11 year run, later revived as Make Room for Granddaddy.¹ With Sheldon Leonard he formed a company that produced The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show.⁴

Choosing Memphis and a purpose

The shrine was first imagined as a general children’s hospital somewhere in the South. St. Jude’s history of its founding says his mentor, Cardinal Samuel Stritch, pointed him to Memphis, the cardinal’s hometown.² By 1955 Thomas and a group of Memphis business leaders had decided on something more ambitious, a research institution for catastrophic childhood diseases, at a time when only 20 percent of children with cancer survived and only 4 percent of those with acute lymphoblastic leukemia lived.² The founder page adds that it was planned as the first fully integrated hospital in the South, open to children regardless of race, religion or ability to pay.³

Raising the money to build it

Thomas had started raising money in the early 1950s, and from 1955 the Memphis backers ran local drives alongside benefit shows that brought major entertainers to the city.³ He and his wife, Rose Marie, crossed the country by car to speak to any group that would listen.³ The Times remembered the same campaign as years of benefit appearances and gentle arm twisting.¹ Construction money, the founder page notes, was only the first hurdle, because a research hospital that billed families nothing would need a steady income every year it stayed open.³

Figure

From vow to hospital

1. 01
   The prayerIn a Detroit church he asks St. Jude Thaddeus to help him find his way in life and promises a shrine.
2. 02
   Early 1950sHe begins discussing with friends what form the vow should take and starts raising money.
3. 03
   1955He and Memphis business people settle on a research hospital for catastrophic diseases in children.
4. 04
   1957One hundred representatives of the Arab American community form ALSAC in Chicago to fund it.
5. 05
   1962St. Jude Children's Research Hospital opens in Memphis.

ALSAC and the Arab American community

Building the hospital was one problem; paying for its operation every year was another. Thomas turned to fellow Americans of Arabic speaking descent, arguing that supporting St. Jude would be a way to thank the country for the freedom it had given their parents and to honor the immigrants who came before them.² In 1957, 100 representatives of the Arab American community met in Chicago and formed ALSAC with the single purpose of raising funds for the hospital, and the organization has run all of its fundraising since, drawing support from Americans of every background.² The founder page frames the request the same way, as a debt of thanks from the children of immigrants.³

The opening and the families who never pay

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital opened on February 4, 1962, on the principle Thomas expressed as no child should die in the dawn of life.² The Times recalled that its first patient was a child with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a disease with a survival rate of 5 percent at the time, and that by Thomas’s death the rate was over 50 percent.¹ The Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame, which made him an inaugural inductee, notes that the hospital has treated children from all 50 states and abroad and holds to his founding promises that no family pays for treatment, travel, housing or food and that its discoveries are shared freely.⁵

Honors, death and the record

The honors came from church and state. The Alger profile dates his Congressional Gold Medal, presented by President Ronald Reagan, to 1983, while the Times placed it in 1986.⁴¹ The Times also recalled that he was knighted by two popes.¹ Thomas died on February 6, 1991, two days after celebrating the hospital’s 29th anniversary with patients, parents and staff, and was laid to rest in the Danny Thomas ALSAC Pavilion on the hospital grounds; Rose Marie Thomas, who died in 2000, lies beside him.³ The Times gave his age as 79, the shrine as 78.¹⁶ Such small conflicts in names, dates and counts are common in the history of a public figure whose life was told mostly by admirers. The sources agree on the shape of the story, the vow, the city, the community that funded it and the families who never receive a bill, and the comparison below sums up what changed for the children it was built to serve. The next entry, Lebanese cuisine, turns from medicine to the table, and the wider background is in Lebanese immigration to the United States.

Figure

Childhood cancer survival, then and now

	When the hospital was planned	St. Jude's recent figure
All childhood cancers	20%	80%
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia	4%	94%
Bills to families for treatment, travel, housing or food	None planned	None