My son Mike was walking through Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia when he saw a nonagenarian seated on a bench. He approached and asked if she was Dr. Evans. “Yes,” she replied. Briefly, he told his story and then thanked her for everything she had done for childhood cancer families. This was the fall of 2019, and earlier that year, we had joined their ranks.

Mike had recognized her because her photo hangs in the entryway of the Ronald McDonald House near the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, aka CHOP. By this day in the park, he had lived in “the house” for several months with my daughter-in-law Emily and, their son—my grandson—Jack, when he wasn’t in the hospital.

Dr. Audrey Evans was born in York, England in 1925, attended medical school in Scotland, and completed her training in the United States. She returned to England to practice pediatrics, but eventually came back to the United States and shifted her focus to pediatric oncology.

Evans was recruited to Philadelphia by Dr. C Everett Coop to start a pediatric oncology unit at CHOP, which she then headed for twenty years. During her tenure, she created the Evans’ staging system for neuroblastoma and was instrumental in improving survival rates for this particular malignancy by fifty percent. 

In the early 1970s, Dr. Evans met the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, Jimmy Murray, who gave her a $100,000 contribution to use as she needed. The money had been raised by the team in honor of one player’s daughter who had leukemia.

As CHOP’s prominence in treating pediatric cancer grew, families had begun to come from around the world for treatment. Evans realized that what these cancer families needed was a haven to support the non-medical aspects of the cancer journey—lodging, food, and community. For this, she wanted to purchase a stone mansion she had found in West Philly near the hospital, but she was $32,000 short.

At the time, one of the Eagle’s players was advertising the new McDonald’s shamrock shake. Together, Dr. Evans, Mr Murray, and the McDonald’s regional manager, Ed Rensi, concocted a plan. McDonald’s would donate the proceeds from the shake to close the gap if the house was called The Ronald McDonald House. 

And so it was that the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House was created as the first of more than 600 houses in existence globally. Today, the original mansion serves as the entry for a multi-level, hotel-style building with an enormous main floor cafeteria where families can gather. Because of their unique needs, pediatric cancer families receive priority.

Our family’s story began one Thursday afternoon at a consultation at CHOP where we learned that Jack’s cancer was no longer in remission, the situation was critical, and he needed to return to Philadelphia the next Tuesday evening to start treatments if he was to have the best chance at survival. Further, we should plan on staying for at least nine months.

Think about that. Mike and Emily had four days to return to their home in Virginia and deal with their careers, house, packing, dog—everything—and return to Philadelphia with no jobs and no place to live.

I left for Philly to secure housing the day after we received the news. My son Ryan had a spare bedroom in his two-bedroom South Philly row-house to serve as a stopgap. But we needed a viable long term solution.

Tuesday, as Mike, Emily, and Jack drove north, Mike received a call. They would have a room at the Ronald McDonald House indefinitely. It came with meals, parking, a shuttle to the hospital, and a network of families who would sustain them in ways that they could not have imagined back then. The cost was $300 per month—or free if that was an issue.

Later that day, when they were moving in, Jack tugged on Mike’s sleeve and whispered, “Dad look! That little girl is bald like me.”

Mike asked, “How does that make you feel?”

Jack smiled and said, “Happy!”

Ultimately, Mike, Emily, and occasionally Jack, would live in the house for nine and a half months. Emily often says, “CHOP saved Jack and the house saved our family.” This is why on that day in Philadelphia, Mike approached an unassuming 94-year-old woman seated on a park bench and gave his most heartfelt thanks for the house she had built—the home it had become.

Subsequently, Mike and Emily have embraced their role as childhood cancer advocates. Mike is on the board of the Charlottesville Ronald McDonald House. He periodically travels to Philadelphia to tell their family’s story to corporate donors.

Emily is a child psychologist who has branched beyond her specialty of autism to support the childhood cancer community by answering gut-wrenching questions like “How do I tell my five-year-old that his three-year-old brother is dying?”

Together, Mike and Emily, along with their friends at Ragged Mountain Running, put on the annual JackFest fall festival in Charlottesville, Virginia. All of the money raised supports the local Ronald McDonald House and the University of Virginia oncology department as they each develop the more complex services required for kids like Jack to be treated closer to home.

In her 80s, Dr. Evans, who had never wed, married a fellow physician at seven in the morning so that neither of them would be late for work. Upon retiring, Dr. Evans started a tuition-free, year-round school intended to break the poverty-cycle for the children from the Philadelphia area. She passed away in 2022 at the age of 97. Her husband had predeceased her in 2018 at the age of 96.

Her incredible life is captured in a film, Audrey’s Children, which will premiere next month at the Philadelphia Film Festival. A photo of Jack will roll in the credits.

I’m writing this now in honor of Dr. Evans—and because September is childhood cancer awareness month. Our family will forever be a childhood cancer family. Besides, this blog is about journeys in all their forms. This story is a part of ours.

Today, Jack is a normal eight-year-old boy who loves baseball, his best friend, Max, and silly jokes (which too often take place in the bathroom). He returns to Philadelphia yearly for tests, and when a room is available, he stays at the house.

Last week his scout troop made cards to send to kids currently in treatment. Here’s Jack’s.

Categories: Ruminations

Tags: Audrey Evans, Jackfest, pediatric cancer, Ronald McDonald House