ABC Wednesday Challenge -- J

It's ABC Wednesday again, and this week, the letter is:


J can stand for many good things: JUNK FOOD, JUKEBOX, JAMBALAYA, JUICE... Jeepers, Just look at the JUMBLE of Good J words.

Here is a J word that seems picked JUST for me.



St Jude, believed by many to be JUDE the Apostle, and JUDE, brother of JESUS, is known as the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes.

I'm not sure if I am more desperate case or lost cause, but It sure seems like I have had my share of each.

JUDE is a variant of the Greek name Ιούδας which roughly translates out to JUDAH, a common name among JEWS 2000 years ago.

According to legend, King Abgar of Edessa sent a letter to Jesus asking to be cured of an illness. Jesus supposedly pressed his face into a cloth and it retained his image, he sent the image back to the king. The king was so impressed with the image that he hung it in a place of honor in one of his palaces. Some time later, The Apostle Jude was sent to the king, and used that image to cure him of his illness.

St. Jude, is often therefore depicted carrying an image of Jesus. Because of this, he also is known as the patron saint of Hospitals. Which brings me to the real topic of todays post:

Amos Alphonsus Muzyad Yakhoob, born in 1912 in Deerfield Michigan, to immigrants from Lebanon, entered show business as Amos JACOB, the anglicised version of his name. He later adopted a name comprised of the first names of each of his brothers Danny and Thomas.



As a young and struggling performer, with a new baby on the way and no idea how to pay the doctor bills, Danny Thomas went into a church and put the last money he had in the donation box. He knelt before the statue of St. Jude, the patron saint of the hopeless, and begged for a sign: should he or should he not remain in show business? Impulsively, Danny promised to erect a shrine to St. Jude if the saint would show Danny his way in life.

Shortly after that, he landed a job that had turned his career around. He went on to have a very successful acting career. But never gave up on that promise that he made.

Danny decided his shrine would be a hospital for needy children, a place where they would be cared for regardless of race, religion or ability to pay - a hospital where no suffering child would be turned away.

Opened in 1962, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital®, located in Memphis, Tenn., is one of the world's premier pediatric cancer research centers. Its mission is to find cures for children with cancer and other deadly diseases through research and treatment. During its nearly 50-year history, St. Jude has developed protocols that have helped push overall survival rates for childhood cancers from less than 20 percent when the hospital opened to 80 percent today.

St. Jude, has treated children from all 50 states and around the world. The research and treatment discoveries made at St. Jude are freely shared with the global medical community.

St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance. No child is ever denied treatment because of the family's inability to pay.

So my J word for the week is JUDE, but more specifically ST JUDE



and even more specifically, ST JUDE CHILDRENS RESEARCH HOSPITAL.

A special thanks to Amanda Robbins, Information Supervisor at St Jude Childrens Research Hospital, for the information she provided to me for this post.

Please take some time to check out what others were INSPIRED to blog about this week, at

ABC Wednesday,
and feel free to add your own blog to the list as we work our way through the alphabet.

~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~

Be sure and join me each Tuesday for Tuesday Trivia Tie-in, where readers are invited to share trivia and show off their treasures.


Read all about it here