It was a bold request from a teen with no time to lose.
T.J. Martell was 17 and battling leukemia when he asked his father, Tony, to raise money for cancer research so “no one else will have to experience what I am going through.”
First his dad came through. And now, so have dozens of friends T.J. never got a chance to meet.
More than three decades after its namesake’s death, T.J.’s Friends, a grass-roots charitable effort started by a pair of (barely) teenage Dunwoody sisters, Sarah Beth and Grace Anne Perry, raised $50,080 for cancer research in just under six months.
Marrying some youthfully creative moneymaking schemes (homemade ziti-to-go, pay-to-play birthday parties) with an impressively mature business plan — all 60 adolescent participants signed a contract promising to raise at least $500, without simply hitting up the family CEO (aka Mom or Dad) — the resulting windfall will go directly to the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University.
“T.J. was our age when he got sick,” said Sarah Beth, a 14-year-old student at Marist School. “It drives home that kids can get sick but also that kids can make a difference.”
Indeed, most of the adults still don’t know quite what hit them.
“I thought at most it would have been a $4,000 to $5,000 venture — which we definitely would have welcomed,” Tony Martell, 83, marveled by phone from his New Jersey home last week. Perhaps providing a preview of the message he’ll deliver today when he introduces T.J.’s Friends to a high-profile New York crowd, he added, “Instead of being out doing who knows what and drinking and stealing, they’re raising money for three terrible diseases. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
All this, coming from a man for whom the “wow” bar admittedly is set awfully high.
A former longtime music industry executive at CBS Records (now Sony Music) and its affiliates, Martell helped sign artists like Ozzy Osbourne and Electric Light Orchestra and produced albums for everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughn to the O’Jays.
When he received an honorary doctorate from Mount Sinai School of Medicine two years ago, his co-honorees on the dais were Michael J. Fox and Magic Johnson. Martell was being recognized for the work of the T.J. Martell Foundation, which he started after his son died at the age of 19 in 1975. Born out of a $50,000 fundraiser held at Buddy Rich’s nightclub in New York, the foundation has gone on to raise $250 million for leukemia, cancer and AIDS research.
The foundation has always had a heavy music-industry focus — Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington all were at Buddy Rich’s that night. Today’s annual “Family Day” fundraiser at Manhattan’s Roseland Ballroom is no exception, with ’tween faves Big Time Rush scheduled to play and the likes of Sony, Warner Music Group and Billboard magazine lining up to be sponsors.
Yet, Tony Martell sounds as excited about the less recognizable faces from metro Atlanta who’ll be there: Eleven of those 60 “founding committee” members (including the Perry sisters), who’ll help launch a New York area chapter of T.J.’s Friends.
“We’re giving them a table to sign people up, and we’ll tout them from the stage,” said Martell, who envisions the concept eventually spreading nationwide (Another chapter is already forming in Nashville, where the foundation’s Southern Division is located on Music Row).
“T.J.’s Friends will be promoted every place we are,” Martell said. “The job that Saint Holly, as I call her, and those kids have done is just tremendous.”
He means Holly Hawkins, 42, mother of the Perry sisters and the sort of “can do” type who can make that “The Blind Side” lady almost look like an underachiever. Three years ago, having recently remarried and relocated from Nashville, Hawkins met famed Atlanta entertainment attorney Joel Katz (Sheryl Crow, Kenny Chesney and B.B. King are just some of the names on his client roster). As part of his involvement with the T.J. Martell Foundation, Katz suggested starting a fundraising wine dinner here. The head of the foundation’s Southern Division knew Hawkins and suggested she help organize it.
That first dinner in October 2009 generated $50,000. Hawkins was already deeply involved with planning the second one (which ended up raising $100,000) when out of the mouth of babes ...
“Sarah Beth gets in the car and she says, ‘When I grow up, I want to work for the T.J. Martell Foundation,’” recalled Hawkins, whose immediate reaction was, “Why wait?” “She said, ‘I can’t go to the wine dinner. So what can I do?’”
Initially, the two girls planned just to try to recruit 10 friends apiece.
“Five hundred dollars is a lot of money,” Sarah Beth recognized. “But I’m a big dreamer.”
“I guess you’re not the only one,” Grace Ann, who’s 13 and attends the Westminster Schools, said half-jokingly.
In fact, the founding committee soon encompassed students from 19 different schools, mostly in metro Atlanta (several members live in other states). Along with bake sales and letter-writing appeals, there were some more novel fundraising ideas: Marianna Hiles, 11, of Atlanta sold $10 personalized squares in a quilt she’s making for a young cancer patient. DeFord Smith, 15, a Walton High rising junior, commandeered his mother’s periodontal offices one Saturday afternoon for a successful phone bank.
Jerri Norman, 12, of Grayson churned out pans of homemade ziti and delivered complete dinners-for-four to customers. Colin Zeek, 14, the center on Marist’s undefeated eighth-grade football team, sold commemorative holiday ornaments to his fellow players, cheerleaders and other interested parties.
Meanwhile, Marist student William Mavity, 16, has been filming it all for a documentary he’s making about the first year of T.J.’s Friends (yes, he raised money, too). He and his camera will be at Roseland Ballroom today.
“They’ve come up with some really clever things, and their passion just rubs off on you,” chuckled Lawrence Boise, a professor of hematology and oncology at Winship, who’s arranged tours of the research labs for participants. “I brought my family to their [April 1 wrap-up] party, and my 16-year-old son signed up for next year right there. He literally grew up with cancer research in the lab with me. But it wasn’t until he saw other kids doing it that he became really interested.”
Of course, adults do have their pluses. Hawkins and her husband, Chuck, have covered a lot of T.J.’s Friends’ startup costs, and numerous other parents have volunteered to help keep the books, do printing and logo design, and serve as the kids’ sounding boards and sous chefs. Local entertainment industry heavyweights such as Katz, Devyne Stephens (Upfront Megatainment), the Recording Academy’s Atlanta chapter executive director Michele Caplinger and Broadcast Atlanta’s Jonathan Greenhill all have lent advice, meeting space and professional expertise.
Hawkins isn’t taking any salary in her newly appointed position as executive director of T.J.’s Friends, which will operate out of Atlanta. As she and her daughters put together a tool kit for new chapters, they’re already planning for Year 2 in the place where it all began.
It can’t ever get too big for the “big dreamer.”
“Next year if we have 500 kids in Atlanta, that’s OK,” Sarah Beth vowed. “We’ll need some people to help us, but we can do it.”
For Tony Martell, who lost a teenage son so long ago, it feels as if a circle is being lovingly closed.
“I’m not a terribly religious person, but the Bible says, ‘A child shall lead the way,’” Martell said. “These children are leading the way to something better.”
