• St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which was founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, treats about 180 patients every day on an outpatient basis and maintains 56 inpatient beds. It is the first institution established for the sole purpose of conducting basic and clinical research into catastrophic childhood diseases, mainly cancer, and is the largest childhood cancer research center in the world in terms of the number of patients enrolled and successfully treated.

• Since St. Jude opened in 1962, it has treated more than 16,000 children from across the United States and 60 foreign countries.

• Research findings at St. Jude are freely shared with doctors and scientists all over the world. St. Jude also enjoys a worldwide reputation as a teaching facility. The medical and scientific staff published about 400 articles in academic journals in 1998.

• St. Jude, which is non-sectarian, has approximately 4,000 patients in active status. It treats children without regard to race, religion, creed or ability to pay. ALSAC®/St. Jude, the fund-raising arm, pays all costs associated with treatment beyond those covered by insurance. Families who have no insurance are never asked to pay.

• The hospital's daily operating costs are approximately $515,000, which are primarily covered by public contributions.

• Out of every dollar received at ALSAC/St. Jude, 86.7 percent goes to current or future needs of St. Jude. About 9.47 percent is used to raise additional dollars, and 3.82 percent is used for administration costs.

• St. Jude pioneered a combination of chemotherapy, radiation and, where necessary, surgery to treat childhood cancers. The hospital continues to expand the use of bone marrow transplantation and gene therapy as treatments for pediatric cancers and genetic diseases.

• St. Jude operates a bone marrow transplant program that enables doctors to perform more than 150 transplants per year.

• St. Jude was the first facility outside the National Institutes of Health to receive federal approval for research involving human gene therapy.

• Peter C. Doherty, Ph.D., chairman of St. Jude’s immunology department, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996. He shares the award with Rolf M. Zinkernagel, M.D., of the University of Zurich. Their findings have led to major breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of virus infections and cancers and in the development of organ transplant procedures and vaccines.

• Since opening in 1962, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has developed protocols that have brought survival rates for childhood cancers from less than 20 percent to better than 70 percent overall. The current survival rates for selected childhood cancers now are:

Diagnosis Survival Rate

• In 1998, St. Jude published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that announced that the long-term survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer, has increased to 80 percent. When St. Jude opened in 1962, the survival rate for ALL was 4 percent.

• To treat a child with standard-risk ALL requires a 2 1/2-year protocol at a cost of $250,000.

• St. Jude patients must be referred by a physician, have a disease currently under study at the hospital, and be eligible for a current research protocol.

• St. Jude researchers and doctors are treating children with genetic immune defects and pediatric AIDS, as well as using new drugs and therapies to fight infections.

• St. Jude is the World Health Organization's North American surveillance center for the study of the influenza virus and the development of vaccines.

• St. Jude has three National Academy of Sciences members: Peter Doherty, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate and chair of the department of immunology; Charles Sherr, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the department of tumor cell biology; and Robert Webster, Ph.D., chair of the department of virology and molecular biology.

• In 1999, St. Jude announced a five-year, $1 billion expansion that will include a Children’s Infection Defense Center, a Genetic Diseases Center, an integrated patient care and research building, an education/conference center, a short-stay housing facility and expansion of the International Outreach and Domestic Affiliate programs.

It was more than 50 years ago that Danny Thomas, then a struggling young entertainer with seven dollars in his pocket, got down on his knees in a Detroit church before a statue of St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Danny Thomas asked the saint to "show me my way in life."

His prayer was answered and soon he moved his family to Chicago to pursue career offers. A few years later, at another turning point in his life, Thomas again prayed to St. Jude and pledged to someday build a shrine to the saint.

Throughout the next years, Danny Thomas' career prospered through films and television, and he became a nationally-known entertainer. And 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, took shape. In 1955, Danny and a group of Memphis businessmen who had agreed to help in supporting his idea 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 had 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 fund-raising efforts, supplementing Danny's benefits that brought scores of major entertainment stars to Memphis. Often accompanied by his wife, Rose Marie, 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 and his wife once visited 28 cities in 32 days. Although Danny 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 turned to his fellow Americans of Arabic-speaking heritage. Believing deeply that Arabic-speaking Americans should, as a group, thank the United States for the gifts of freedom given their parents, Thomas also felt the support of St. Jude would be a noble way of honoring his immigrant forefathers who had come to America.

Danny's request struck a responsive chord. In 1957, 100 representatives of the Arab-American community met in Chicago to form ALSAC - The American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities - with a sole purpose of raising funds for the support of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Since that time, this group, with national headquarters in Memphis and regional offices throughout the United States, has assumed full responsibility for all the hospital's fund-raising efforts, raising millions annually through benefits and solicitation drives among Americans of all ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds. Today, ALSAC is the seventh largest not-for-profit fund-raising organization in America and is supported by the efforts of more than one million volunteers nationwide.

Danny's dream - St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - opened its doors in 1962 and is now recognized as one of the world's premier centers for study and treatment of catastrophic diseases in children. Focusing on pediatric leukemias, solid tumor forms of cancer, and biomedical research, during its first decade of existence, the hospital's curative therapies and research successes spread its fame worldwide and helped save the lives of innumerable children everywhere.

Today's basic and clinical research at St. Jude includes work in chemotherapy, the biochemistry of normal and cancerous cells, radiation treatment, blood diseases, resistance to therapy, viruses, hereditary diseases, influenza, and psychological effects of catastrophic illnesses. Now blessed with the first sizable population of adults living cancer-free after having received chemotherapy and radiation treatments as children, the hospital stays in touch with these former patients in order to conduct long-term biostatistical investigations on the history of their health.

Potential secondary problems related to their disease treatment could result in chemotherapy and radiation adjustments that improve the life of future children diagnosed with cancer.

To date, St. Jude Hospital has treated more than 16,000 children from across the United States and 60 foreign countries. All were accepted by physician referral because the child had a newly diagnosed disease that was under research at St. Jude and ability to pay was not an issue for admittance for one single patient. All St. Jude patients are treated regardless of their ability to pay, with ALSAC covering all costs beyond those reimbursed by third party insurers, and all costs when no insurance is available.Through striking improvements in the care of pediatric leukemias and numerous forms of solid tumors, Danny Thomas' "little hospital in Memphis" - which now has an annual operating budget of $200 million - has brought about improved healthcare for children all over the world.

From a promise of "show me my way in life and I will build you a shrine", Danny Thomas lived to see his little hospital become a beacon of hope for the catastrophically ill children of the world. The founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital 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. Danny is gone now, but his dream lives on.