St. Jude's given million-dollar gift

By Woody Baird , Associated Press writer
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Somewhere, somebody hit it big -- $1 million big -- in a McDonald's peel-off game, but the winners Thursday were St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and its young cancer patients.
The winner of the McDonald's Monopoly contest took a game piece worth $1 million, put it in a plain white envelope and mailed it anonymously to the Memphis hospital.
St. Jude executive Richard Shadyac called it "a holiday miracle."
Game rules bar the legal transfer of winning pieces from one person to another, but McDonald's agreed to make good on the payoff, which will be made in 20 annual payments of $50,000 each.

"The generosity is overwhelming," Trudy Kerwell of Ottawa, Ill., whose son Jacob, 2, is being treated for leukemia at St. Jude, said Thursday. "I would like to thank the person who did this. Without such generosity none of this would be here."
The hospital, an international leader in the treatment of catastrophic childhood diseases, depends heavily on donations and takes in patients regardless of their ability to pay, even covering their family's living expenses while they're in Memphis.
The gift was the largest anonymous donation to the hospital in the 23 years since St. Jude was founded by comedian Danny Thomas.
The money will go into a general fund for treatment and research.
Fred Tillman, a McDonald's franchisee and spokesman, said the company has no way of knowing where the winning game piece was handed out or who got it.
The envelope received by St. Jude was postmarked Dallas and had no return address. Inside was the folded paper game board, with the peel-off game piece taped to it. The piece read, "Instant winner: $1,000,000."
Game pieces are given out at McDonald's restaurants throughout the country and also are included in newspaper inserts. The winner was one of only three such pieces distributed nationwide, and the odds of finding one are more than 200 million to 1.
Mr. Shadyac, director of the hospital's fund-raising organization, said he hopes the donor knows how much the hospital appreciates the gift. Most of the thousands of donations St. Jude receives each year are $50 or less.
"We consider all the gifts we receive, large or small, as special," Mr. Shadyac said. "Clearly, this donor believed in our cause. For that reason, we think of this gift as a holiday miracle."

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