Great American Catholic Eulogies by Carol DeChant

Author:Carol DeChant
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780879464677
Publisher: Acta Publications

DANNY’S PROMISE: IN MEMORY OF DANNY THOMAS

by Phil Donahue

February 8, 1991

Church of the Good Shepherd, Beverly Hills, CA

Among the eulogists at the funeral of Danny Thomas were two American Presidents (Reagan and Ford); comedy legends Milton Berle and Bob Hope; and Roger Cardinal Mahony, then Archbishop of Los Angeles. Another eulogist, television personality Phil Donahue, had a special relationship with Thomas: Donahue is married to his daughter Marlo, actress and author of the children’s book Free to Be You and Me. Donahue’s tribute to his father-in-law uses all of the names by which Danny Thomas was known and loved before he became known to millions: Amos was an early Americanization of his original Lebanese name Muzyad.

Danny Thomas was called a comedian in his early days doing stand-up in Detroit and Chicago clubs, but he always said he thought of himself as a storyteller. His act involved telling elaborate tales about quirky characters.

In 1940, the struggling storyteller prayed to be able to use his gift to make a living for his family. In gratitude, he promised he would build a shrine to St. Jude Thaddeus, patron of impossible causes. That shrine evolved to become a unique medical research hospital offering free treatment for children with cancer.

Danny told stories he’d never once dreamt of telling to make all that happen…about children with diseases for which there were no treatments in that era, mostly fatal cancers in which the best survival rate was 4 percent. Eventually, Danny came up with more stories to show his friends and fans how they could help.

While his talents blossomed into radio, film, and television work, as a star and as a producer, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, claimed as much of his energy as his career did. The hospital became his life’s work and remains his living legacy. After he raised the money to begin construction, he organized Arab-American donors to pledge to underwrite the operating cost of providing free medical care to St. Jude patient-families. And he enlisted all of America—including its children—to be a part of his answered prayer.

In 1985, Danny Thomas received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Ronald Reagan in a White House ceremony. In 1991, he died at the age of seventy-nine. He and his wife Rose Marie are buried in a family crypt at the pavilion on the hospital grounds.28

Five years after Danny’s death, Dr. Peter Doherty, a St. Jude Hospital immunologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.29 Through the development of research and protocols, survival rates for the four most common childhood cancers are now 94 percent (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, the most common childhood cancer); 85 percent (Meduloblastoma—a brain tumor); and two at 90 percent (Hodgkin Lymphoma and Wilms tumor [kidney]).30

Today the work continues with the dedication of Danny’s three children, the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities organization which he founded to raise the hospital’s operating funds, and the many donors and volunteers who continue to be a part of Danny’s dream to build a shrine to St.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.