‘Winning’ attitudes

December 1, 2018 |

3 min read

Nearly 1,000 former patients and family members participating in 2018 St. Jude Memphis Marathon give other runners a unique, emotional lift across the finish line

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Dec. 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is an article by Tom Charlier, a writer for ALSAC:

Amid the thousands of runners who readied to run as the rain cleared away and the sun emerged, James Eversull stepped to the starting line of the St. Jude Memphis Marathon Saturday determined to build on a story he’s heard often, even if he has no personal memory of it.

That story began in 1964, when Eversull, all of a year and a half old, became a patient at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospitall, which had opened here just two years earlier. Diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia — a virtual death sentence back then with a survival rate of only 4 percent — he was part of a group receiving a treatment regimen involving chemotherapy and radiation.

“They gave it to five of us, and I was the only survivor,” said the now-55-year-old Texan, who cites the experience as a reason for running the full marathon benefitting St. Jude.

“Anything I can do to help kids is something I want to do. God saved me for a reason.”

While Eversull was among the oldest St. Jude survivors running Saturday, 8-year-olds Kinlee Johnson and Alexander Bolding are new to their journey. They became best friends a year ago while undergoing treatment for medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumor.

“We’re so excited to be part of this,” Kinlee’s mom, Nicole Johnson said. “St. Jude has been the biggest blessing for me, because they saved my daughter’s life.”

Among the record 26,000 runners participating in the SJMM slate of races, Eversull, Kinlee and Alexander were part of an important subset. Nearly 1,000 entrants in the 5K, 10K, half-marathon, marathon and other events were St. Jude patients or family members and friends of patients. Many wore one of two types of armbands — yellow for those who are in treatment or have survived and purple to honor deceased patients.

The involvement of patients and their families is one of the distinguishing components of the annual St. Jude race. Another is the jaunt runners take through the hospital’s 65-acre campus, where staff, caregivers and patients, many of them in wheelchairs, line the course waving pom-poms and signs and ringing cowbells.

The race is the largest single-day fundraiser for St. Jude, generating some $11.2 million this year — another record. The money helps St. Jude treat children with cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases where families never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing or food, and it supports research efforts that have helped boost survival rates for childhood cancer from 20 percent when St. Jude opened in 1962, just ahead of Eversull’s diagnosis, to 80 percent today.

This year’s participants came from 45 states and six countries. Some 6,500 were “St. Jude Heroes,” meaning they raised money on their own for the race.

The first marathoners reached the St. Jude campus, about 5 miles into the race, in less than 26 minutes, and the first finisher had an unofficial time of 2 hours, 29 minutes, 4 seconds — more than 4 minutes faster than last year’s winner.

During the wait for the race to begin, Kinlee and Alexander played and danced together near the starting line as if their cancers had never happened. “They’re a package deal,” Alexander’s mom, Jillian Bolding, said. Because they used wheelchairs part of the way on the 5K, the two youngsters were the first participants out on the course.

Diagnosed last November, Kinlee underwent 30 rounds of proton therapy at St. Jude, which has the world’s only proton therapy center dedicated just to children, and four months of chemo to treat her brain tumor. Like Alexander, she’s finished treatment, but is struggling to get stronger after her mom said her weight dropped from 75 pounds to 40 pounds.

“I’m bringing her wheelchair, but she’s going to walk as much as her little heart will let her,” Kinlee’s mom said. “She still has a long road ahead of her.”

Along that road, she’ll find Eversull, who came to St. Jude decades earlier and on Saturday completed his fifth marathon.

Long after his treatment ended, Eversull became one of the first to sign up for the St. Jude LIFE Study, which tracks the health of childhood cancer survivors to help them deal with further problems and provides researchers insight into the late effects of treatment.

“It’s good to help other kids,” he said.

Tom Charlier is a writer for ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He previously worked as a journalist in Memphis for more than 25 years.