Marlo Thomas sat down with uInterview to discuss the work of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and shared with us her greatest life lesson. It came from her father, the late Danny Thomas, who founded St. Jude in 1962. Put briefly, Thomas’ lesson is “to notice other people.”

“My dad used to say that there were two kinds of people in the world – those who stop at a traffic accident, and those who just drive by,” Thomas explained. “And he definitely was a person who would stop and help at a traffic accident. But there’s a lot of ‘traffic accidents’ in our life. There are people that are homeless, there are people that are sick, there are people that are helpless, people that can’t afford any medical care. There’s all kinds of ‘traffic accidents’ to notice.”

Thomas shares that it was on these principles that St. Jude was founded. Her father always wanted to help people, and even named the institution after St. Jude, who was the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes, because it offered a final resort for children and families who needed help.

“St. Jude is a place that was really based on that idea that we should help our neighbor and take care of sick children,” Thomas added. “And I think that my dad really felt that the most helpless of all were children with hopeless diseases, and that’s who he wanted to help.”

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