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Key points
- An unlikely doctor from Buffalo, New York put St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on the map, making sure it treated all kinds of children.
- St. Jude Children's Research Hospital founder, Dr. Donald Pinkel, also created the first volunteer blood donor system in western Tennessee.
- Since its humble beginnings, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has become a force in medicine.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is arguably the most prominent cancer facility in the world. Between its cure rate, television ads, and mass mailings, many know its name and reputation.
“It’s the top place to partner with,” says Len Forkas, founder of Hopecam, which helps kids with cancer stay connected with school and their friends. “We doubled down to go with St. Jude when we were getting started, and it helped take us nationwide.”
St. Jude got its start when the actor Danny Thomas vowed to build a shrine to St. Jude Thaddeus if his career ever took wings. Kind of a personal deal with God.
Once Thomas became a household name in the popular television show, Make Room for Daddy, he discussed his plan with Catholic priest Samuel Stritch, a close friend, who urged him to build his hospital in the South. A city like Memphis.
But matters wouldn’t have gotten any farther without Dr. Donald Pinkel. The first director of pediatrics at the Roswell Park Cancer Center, Pinkel met with Thomas and others in Memphis in 1961. It was an easy stopover as Pinkel was heading to Denver to interview for a job there.
Early in the Memphis discussion, Pinkel asked Thomas’ board and members of the University of Tennessee Medical School if they would “accept all children, including black children, at this hospital, and that there would be complete integration in all levels—staff, nurses, everything?”
"Boiled, boiled"
There was an awkward silence until one of the university chairmen spoke up. He freely used the N-word and told Pinkel that a few black patients would be fine—as long as the planned hospital wasn’t overrun with patients of color.
Pinkel didn’t say a word, but inside he recalled, “I boiled, boiled, boiled. I thought, ‘Wow! That guy is giving me a challenge. To say I can’t do that.’”
Pinkel’s worst fears about the South had been borne out. After all, he had grown up in a large, liberal family in Buffalo, New York, where a large portrait of Abraham Lincoln hung on the wall. His ancestors had fought for the Union in the Civil War, and one of his great-uncles had been killed in the conflict. Personally, Pinkel vowed to never work in that part of the country because “there was so much prejudice down there.”
Pinkel continued west to Colorado, where he was offered “a sweetheart job.” The university already sported a state-of-the-art hospital right on campus, with quality staff and excellent students. It seemed to be an easy choice.
Yet what nagged at Pinkel was that he had been challenged by the university chairman in Memphis. Back in high school, a coach had warned Pinkel that you “never run away from a fight. It’ll be more and difficult the further you run to fight back.”
The next morning, Pinkel awoke and decided he would take the job in Memphis, building a hospital for Danny Thomas. His friends were stunned. His mentor, Mitchell Rubin, who was from Charleston, South Carolina, wrote Pinkel a long letter telling him, “You can’t do that.” But Pinkel’s mind was made up.
He reached out to Ed Barry, the chairman of the board for the new hospital, and Mike Tamer, the executive director for the American Lebanese Syrian and Association Charities. (Thomas was Lebanese). If they weren’t in his corner, Pinkel knew he had little chance of success in western Tennessee.
A deal is made
The three met at a neutral site—a hotel room at the Conrad Hilton in Chicago. There, Pinkel outlined his vision for the research hospital. How they would not only take care of all children, but the primary focus would be on kids with cancer and other supposed incurable diseases like muscular dystrophy. Barry, like Pinkel, was Jesuit-educated and one of the wealthiest, most influential men in Memphis. The two of them soon hit it off.
“Our minds just met,” Pinkel said. “It clicked. We didn’t have to explain things. We were from the same background.”
In comparison, Tamer hadn’t finished high school, but he too believed strongly in civil rights. He urged Pinkel and Barry to sort out the details and he would focus on the big picture. At the end of the day, the three shook hands, and Pinkel officially took the job. A few weeks later, the doctor arrived in Memphis on the Feast of St. Jude, which he took as a good omen.
Pinkel remembered that his mother had a holy card with a special prayer from St. Jude, the Patron of Hopeless Causes. She urged him to say that prayer every night.
That said, if Pinkel had known what awaited him in Memphis, he would have thought twice about taking the post. By the time he arrived, the new hospital was already running out of money and he first had to become a fundraiser to assure that the patient wing was built.
Decades later, looking back on the move to Memphis, Pinkel said the job “was a very iffy proposition. But it sure got my attention. The people there told me they would support me, so I decided to find out.”
The new doctor in town soon became involved with the black community. When several local civil rights leaders were jailed and went on a hunger strike, Pinkel visited them and brought along infant formula. He told them to drink it to keep up their strength.
By the end of his first year, Pinkel had 126 patients at St. Jude. They were “girls and boys, black and white, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish,” Memphis magazine later detailed. Just as importantly, Pinkel had assembled a medical staff of 100, many of whom took some cajoling to move to the South.
Despite such early success, Pinkel realized that if he didn’t fix a problem with the local blood banks, little of the cancer research he was proposing would get off the ground. At the time, there was a steep markup from the donor level to the local hospitals in the Memphis area for blood. Pinkel’s new hospital was sometimes being charged as much as $35 a unit. So he appealed to the commanders at the Millington Naval Air Station, urging the naval personnel and Marines there to become regular blood donors. A system was worked out where men in uniform received weekend passes to Memphis for the blood donations they gave. Pinkel also recruited local college students and inmates at local prisons. In doing so, he formed the first volunteer donor system in western Tennessee and, as he said years later, “broke the back of the local blood banks.”
And that was one of the small steps that helped make St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital the force in medicine that it is today.
