Fair 48° F

Home > Archive > Mar 27, 2008

Country Cares, So Do St. George Residents
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Local country music station KONY (99.9 on the FM radio dial) opened its airwaves and phone lines to aid the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on Feb. 21 and 22, and local listeners can still pledge their support to the cause.
For the ninth annual year, KONY participated in Country Cares for St. Jude Kids, a nationwide yearly effort to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the nation's third-largest charitable health care facility. Country Cares raised nearly $30 million nationally last year for St. Jude, and this year, local KONY listeners pledged more than $49,000 to the cause during the station's two-day radiothon.
“We're just a small part, and our listeners are great people, and they recognize the need to fund that research,” Canyon Media general manager and KONY radio announcer Carl Lamar said.
Lamar was among the many who put in time and effort to make the call-in event a success this year. Many volunteers outside of Canyon Media and KONY also volunteered, answering phones and taking pledges from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. in support of St. Jude.
St. Jude is known worldwide for its efforts in pioneering new medical research in the fight against cancer and other catastrophic diseases in children. Parents of the young patients who are treated at St. Jude pay nothing beyond what their insurance will cover, and the uninsured are never asked to pay, according to the St. Jude Web site.
“I think that St. Jude's is just an unbelievable place,” Lamar said. “They call themselves 'the hospital without walls,' meaning that the research that's gained there is shared freely with the rest of the world.”
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital was founded by the late Danny Thomas, an entertainer and star of television and film. When Thomas was just a young performer struggling to break into show-business, he knelt in a Detroit church one day before a statue of St. Jude Thaddeus (the patron saint of hopeless causes), pleading for direction in his life, according to the St. Jude Web site. Thomas' cause soon became less hopeless, and as his career began to take off, he pledged to someday build a shrine to St. Jude. His St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has been the fulfillment of that promise, and contributors to such fundraisers as Country Cares help keep the facility and its invaluable research going year after year.
“I really think that when the cure for cancer is found, it's going to be found at a place like St. Jude's,” Lamar said.
“That research doesn't come cheap,” he went on to say, “and so we just realize that every country radio station that's involved with this can help add to the monies that are needed to keep this place open, so they can continue the research. Because if they don't, it's not going to be found. The cure is out there, and so the research has to be done in order to find it.”
Country Cares for St. Jude Kids was instituted back in 1989 by Alabama lead singer Randy Owen, who was inspired to help the hospital after meeting St. Jude founder Thomas. More than 200 radio stations across the country now participate in the event, and millions of dollars are raised for St. Jude each year through Country Cares.
Local KONY listeners and anyone else interested in supporting the cause can still contribute, Lamar said, and pledge their support and money to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. A link to donate to St. Jude can be found on the KONY Web site, www.999konycountry.com.

---