Meeting Celebrities for a Good Cause

That late afternoon in August of 1979, my husband John and I, along with our eighteen-year-old son Phil and his friend Rick, mingled with the celebrities as if we belonged to this element of society. Invited as guests of the annual Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament in Sun Valley, Idaho, we anticipated an exciting evening before the four days of golfing started in just over twelve hours. The only disappointment for Phil was that his girlfriend Kathy wasn’t with him.

Most of the excitement for me came before the banquet started. At the edge of the crowd on the lawn, we met former President Gerald Ford and his wife Betty, with several Secret Servicemen hovering around in their sharp blue blazers and light gray pants, with little pins on their lapels. President Ford agreed to pose with John for a snapshot, for in those days many people, even strangers, commented on John’s looking much like the president. The eventual photo, however, showed distinct differences in facial features, but the two men’s clothing matched to a tie.

Almost as soon as the camera clicked, Phil pulled us away, for he’d spied a more fascinating superstar, Hank Aaron. Through the crowd of famous faces smiling at us like old friends, he guided us to meet his baseball hero. Phil, an avid sports fan, had given up participating in all physically competitive school sports by this time but had held onto baseball longest, through his senior year of high school. A summer of bowling followed and then only chess remained. For Phil was sick.

We watched him greet Aaron without giving his own last name but he did introduce John and me with full names, and then Rick. Not so shy as Phil, Rick spoke up, as perhaps none of us could have done.

“Mr. Aaron, we know you’re playing golf this weekend for that cancer foundation.”

“In Minnesota, I think they said,” Jeff added.

“Yeah, and that’s exactly why I’m here. Baseball’s my game.”

“And how we know! But if you should make a bad shot tomorrow—” Phil hesitated, not knowing quite how to finish his sentence.

Rick spoke for him, “You can take it over for ten dollars.”

“I can?” Aaron probably already knew that, for he most likely participated in this event every year.

Rick continued talking. “That’s called a mulligan. And that money goes to Phil here.”

Aaron looked at Phil who would have been bald if he had removed his Atlanta Braves cap. A glance at the cap put a twinkle in Aaron’s eyes. He looked back at Rick.

“He’s got leukemia, sir, and is headed for Baltimore for a bone marrow transplant. So, we want to urge you to play your worst for him tomorrow.”

While Rick talked, Aaron selected a pristine baseball from a big box of them and looked at Phil once more.

“Your name’s Phil, right?”

“Yeah, and I’m your greatest fan.” Phil’s voice was about an octave lower than Rick’s, so deep in fact, that Aaron seemed charmed by it, as I always was.

“And you’ve got leukemia?”

“Yeah, I have. For over two years. That’s why I’m wearing this cap. My hair’s gone. This transplant’s the last resort, they tell me.” Phil smiled his sweetest but as if he questioned last resorts.

Aaron wrote his name across the baseball and shook Phil’s hand, wishing him luck. He signed another baseball for Rick.

A few other guests closed in to get to Aaron, and our little group of four receded, with Phil’s still saying, “Thank you,” over his shoulder.

Then we ran into Clint Eastwood. Phil proffered the baseball.

“How about autographing this baseball for me?” He cradled the ball in Eastwood’s hand before the actor knew what for.

The actor’s most riveting eyes bore into mine. His face shouted was this my child, asking him to sign a baseball? His thoughts must have reached someone else, for across the heads came a clear rebuke.

“Sign it, Clint.”

Eastwood hunted for the voice and found it in Hank Aaron. The actor signed the baseball. As we moved on, Rick whispered something to Clint. I knew what it was without acknowledging it.

We met Telly Sevalas with his handsome baldhead and his brother with a full head of black hair (real?), Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, George Blanda of football past, and other athletes, politicians, and entertainers. Soon the two men who had founded this particular golf tournament three years before approached us. Harmon Killibrew, a baseball Hall-of-Famer himself, a Republican, and former Idaho Congressman Ralph Harding, a Democrat, wanted to know at whose table Phil would like to sit during the banquet beginning in minutes.

Without hesitation, Phil said, “I’d rather sit with athletes than with politicians.” He gave the politician a big smile.

Our table seated the four of us, the official from the Minnesota research organization, George Blanda and his wife, and a tennis player whose name escapes me now. When our plates appeared, the tennis player was served fish while the rest of us had prime rib. The handsome young black tennis player had lost a brother to leukemia and had learned something about proper diet for cancer patients. So had we. At home Phil did not eat beef but it was too late now to change entrees.

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The Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament in Sun Valley exists to raise funds for leukemia and cancer research, in memory of Thompson who played for the Minnesota Twins, and who died of leukemia in 1976. Thompson, a big league shortstop, wanted to be remembered as a commendable baseball player rather than as a leukemia victim. However, he is possibly overruled, for the tournament has grown into a huge money-raiser for cancer research with emphasis on leukemia, with its most consistent supporter of golf, as well as of research, the late President Gerald Ford. Killibrew and Harding did not know each other before they became founders of the event. Killibrew engaged athletes to take part in the tournament and Harding, the politicians. Several movie and television personalities have homes in the Sun Valley area, for Sun Valley is world famous for its winter sports, more so than for its golf.

During the past thirty-three years the tournament has become one of the most major fund-raisers for cancer research in the country, with noteworthy progress achieved in patients’ recovery. In 2008, it contributed $710,000 to the fund, supporting research at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. This is only part of the $4,000,000 the tournament has contributed, not only to the work in Minnesota, but also to the Mountain States Tumor Institute in Boise.

At this institute Phil received the first treatments for his acute leukemia, with an early prognosis that he would live two more months. My husband withheld this information from me, knowing perhaps that for me it would be too much too soon. But the prognosis was wrong. We sought alternative medicine—which proved quite effective—in addition to the chemotherapy, and Phil lived two and a half years more. He continued both types of treatment, allowing him to graduate from high school and plan for college. Twentieth Century Lanes, where Jeff’s bowling team sprang, sponsored a local drive for funds, which covered cost of a dozen or so roundtrip flights between Idaho and Maryland for family members during the two-month period, and for their meals, and their stay at a nearby Ronald MacDonald House at the Sheraton Hotel. These were extras insurance did not cover except the patient’s travel. Both of Jeff’s brothers took time off from their jobs and donated plasma. I took leave from teaching school. Phil’s father was with us when he needed to be, but we depended on someone’s regular paycheck coming in. Phil received $6,000 from the golf tournament for golfers’ bad shots getting a second try, the local drive brought in $17,000, and at the beginning of November we headed for Baltimore.

But the bone marrow transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital failed. All the patients in Phil’s ward, which treated not only leukemia but also aplastic anemia, died unless they had an identical twin to donate marrow for the transplant. Phil’s brother Mike was not a perfect match for donating marrow for Phil.

Internet findings show progress in cancer recoveries has increased through the Minnesota research but without pinpointing results for leukemia. Any statement of success for leukemia from any source most likely refers to only chronic leukemia, not acute, as was Phil’s type. In recent years the name of this horrible disease has become cancer of the blood, as if that might make it less menacing.

All drives for cancer cure are commendable, but European countries don’t have our problem. We must be doing something wrong. Perhaps it’s time we looked into their routines, starting with diet.

But one has choices. Phil never smoked in his life, resulting in the head physician on the ward’s reporting that Phil had the best pair of lungs he’d ever seen there. Phil also stayed with the diet we learned about in alternative treatments. After four remissions, an unusually high number for cancer of Phil’s type, he made the choice himself to go for the transplant. This takes a great deal of courage and he certainly measured up for those days of hope and days of despair.

In the meantime, the action goes on in Sun Valley every August for The Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament. Some of my last memories of Phil are based there. Like never forgetting Phil, I shall never forget the tournament of 1979.

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