This is a boy-meets-girl story, with complications. Because what love story for the ages ever came off without some complications? And so: Boy gets cancer. Girl gets cancer, too. Boy loses right arm, at age 7, but discovers his inner lefty. He takes up golf, and even plays on the baseball team. “I played first base and centerfield,” he says, with pride. “I wasn’t the kid in right field who ate grass. I was part of the team.”

More than 20,000 participants from all 50 states and 75 countries crowded the streets of Downtown Memphis for one of the biggest fundraising events of the year in the fight against childhood cancer. 

St. Jude became the first fully integrated children’s hospital in the South, where Black and white patients were treated in the same room, dined together and shared bathroom facilities.