Why the St. Jude Memphis Marathon Weekend Matters Most
Memphis, you helped make this possible.
Your support. Not just today, but for decades. Your support helped make this special scene that I was so fortunate to witness Saturday on our famous Union Avenue so memorable.
Among the 20,000 runners at Saturday’s St. Jude Memphis Marathon Weekend, including a record 1,350 St. Jude patient family member teams, was 17-year-old Tyler West.
It was Tyler’s first full marathon, though not his first time toeing a start line. He has run kids’ races, 5Ks, 10Ks and half marathons since he was 6 years old — when he ran for his cousin Alyssa, a St. Jude patient.
While meaningful, Saturday was far from the hardest day of Tyler’s life. A couple months after that race as a six-year-old, he lost the ability to walk. And then there were more than 900 days he spent undergoing surgery, chemotherapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
More: More than 20,000 race in Memphis' annual St. Jude Marathon, running to end childhood cancer
Tyler is but one of the tens of thousands who have survived childhood cancer thanks to St. Jude and its supporters, like Saturday’s participants, including 4,000 St. Jude Heroes, the 40,000 lining the streets to cheer, 4,000 selfless volunteers, and the untold number of first responders from across the area who kept us safe. If you ran Saturday, you may have seen Tyler’s before-and-after photos at the Mission Mile along North Parkway in Midtown.
Tyler, and patients and survivors like him, are our ‘why.’ That’s a word we discuss a lot at ALSAC and St. Jude — why. And one we heard throughout the weekend. In this most generous city, it seems to be your why, too. Why we run, why we fundraise, why our doctors, scientists and nurses work round the clock to research, treat and, God-willing, one day defeat childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases worldwide.
But the sad truth is: So much more work remains. So, Brady Mortimer is our why too. He came to St. Jude for treatment of a rare brain cancer when he was just 3 years old. Sadly, he didn’t survive. He spent his last day playing with his big brother, Andrew.
“The hardest, hardest thing to do out of everything here at St. Jude was to wake up 7-year-old Andrew to let him know he had to say good-bye to his baby brother and his best friend,” his mom, Katy, said.
As she has every year for five years since the family moved to Memphis, Katy was among those running through the St. Jude campus on Saturday in the 5K, a proud member of Team Brady’s Bunch. Even better, she was surprised along the route by Andrew, 18 now, who ran alongside, supporting his mom. You helped make this beautiful family’s moment happen, Memphis.
It’s important to the family to give back in this way because, Andrew said, “of the memories St. Jude gave me before he passed away.”
Since St. Jude opened in 1962, overall childhood cancer survival rates in this country have risen from less than 20 percent to 80 percent. Four out of five kids with cancer today survive their disease. We run for them. We run because, if you’re the parent of the one who does not survive — like Katy — you know how much this research and care matters.
Worldwide, there are 400,000 new cases of childhood cancer each year. The vast majority of those are in low- and middle-income countries where survival rates are less than 20 percent. It some ways, it is still 1962 in those countries.
As runners passed through the St. Jude campus Saturday, cheered on by doctors, scientists, nurses, staff and, of course, patients and their families, they were also surrounded by construction cranes and hardhats. Because of you, St. Jude Memphis Marathon Weekend helps fuel the historic $12.9 billion St. Jude strategic plan growing our campus by leaps and bounds as it expands our lifesaving mission globally to address those 400,000 yearly cases.
The world-changing impact of this global movement is what motivates us to run and to fundraise — our why. Though she lost Brady, Katy runs for St. Jude because of the “miracles walking out of there every single day.”
And it’s the ‘why’ that pushed Tyler to double last year’s effort and complete 26.2 miles this year. “I'm ready to see where life takes me,” he said. He sees purpose in his training because, he said, “I want to be able to show kids like me … it's okay to feel in pain, but you can do anything that you put your heart to.”
In a city known for its soul, everyone at ALSAC and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is grateful to you, Memphis, for putting your heart into supporting, volunteering and cheering our patients, runners and mission as we work to find cures and save children, everywhere. This is always a day that makes me proud to be a Memphian.
Richard C. Shadyac Jr. is president and CEO of ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: St. Jude Marathon Weekend fundraising charity Memphis
