Sponsored by the Gemological Institute of America
Feel-Good Friday: On the Road with JFC
National Jeweler tags along on a tour of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, one of the recipients of the money raised by Jewelers for Children.

Memphis, Tenn.--It costs $2.4 million a day to keep St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis running.
That adds up to a little more than half a billion dollars a year that goes into patient care, research, food, and housing and services for patients and their families, none of whom ever receive a bill.
Approximately 75 percent of the costs of operating St. Jude are covered by public donations and the average donation is $40. There are also big corporations and organizations, like Jewelers for Children, that raise large sums of money for the hospital every year.
And every couple years, the charity takes a trip to Memphis so those who donate can see what their money is helping to do.
This year, JFC invited National Jeweler along on its tour of St. Jude, a research hospital that got its start with a broke entertainer who couldn’t pay his hospital bill and a promise to a saint.
Thomas’s Promise
As the story goes, Danny Thomas--the “Jimmy Fallon of his time,” as one St. Jude employee put it--did not have the $70 needed to get his wife, Rose Marie, out of the hospital after their daughter Marlo was born in 1937.
So, like any good Catholic, he prayed to a saint for a solution, St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes. He promised to build him a shrine if he came through.
The next day, he got a call to play a singing toothbrush on the radio, a job that paid $75.
Years later, after his career had taken off, Thomas heard the story of an African-American boy in the South who had been hit by a car while riding his bicycle.
The child’s injuries were treatable, but he died after a hospital refused to treat him because of the color of his skin.
This helped Thomas decide exactly how he was going to keep his promise--by opening a children’s hospital where every child would receive treatment, regardless of their race, religion or ability to pay.
Though he was from Detroit, Thomas picked Memphis because it was the hometown of a cardinal who had been a mentor, Cardinal Samuel Stritch.
The original St. Jude was erected in 1962.
Though
On one side of the hallway are the names of the people, some of them well-known like Elvis Presley and Sammy Davis, Jr., who were early supporters of the hospital.
There are also, on a different floor, two plaques that feature a symbol well-known to many who are reading this article: the JFC’s block logo.
Since its inception in 1999, Jewelers for Children has raised a total of $13 million for St. Jude, Executive Director David Rocha said.
Here’s where that money went: $1.5 million to the Bone Marrow Transplantation Laboratory; $600,000 for a Stem Cell Transplant Laboratory; $2 million for a chair in Genetics and Gene Therapy; $5 million for research into the immune system during bone marrow transplants; and $3 million for research into using parents as bone marrow donors.
Now, JFC is funding the Bone Marrow Human Applications Laboratory for $3 million, $750,000 of which was paid in 2016 and 2017.
The Million Key Movement
Among the participants on the St. Jude trip was Steven Vardi, who is working to raise a lot of money for JFC through the sale of key pendants.
Vardi is the third generation of his family in the jewelry business. He runs Vardi Company, the manufacturing firm he started with his brother Michael in 2005.
A year ago, they launched the “Million Key Movement” using a design that a teacher named Gail Cain brought to Vardi Company and asked them to make--a key-shaped pendant with the word “love” at the tip where the bit would be.
The goal of the movement is to sell enough keys, which are available in various metals with or without gemstones, to raise $1 million for JFC while, at the same time, inspiring a movement that brings people together and makes them feel good about the jewelry they are buying.
The keys are sold on the Million Key Movement website, and Vardi said he’d like to create programs with the keys tailored to both major and independent retailers.
“I know that we all have a common goal; anyone who supports JFC has a common goal of helping,” he said. “This is our part. This is something that we felt we can do.”

The Vardi Company also gave 75 keys to Make-a-Wish wish recipients this year and is donating 250 to the patients and families at St. Jude.
Vardi brought some of those 250 along to Memphis, handing them out during the final segment of the hospital tour when the group gathered outside the Kay Kafe (Kay Jewelers’ parent company, Signet Jewelers Ltd., is a huge donor to the hospital, outside of JFC) to--what else?--make jewelry with St. Jude patients.
Later, back in New York, Vardi talked about the experience of handing out those keys to the children, and the parents of those children, at St. Jude.
People at the hospital, he said, love getting the key; it’s “something to hold onto, something that’s positive.”
Because it’s part of a larger movement that links people together through the use of a hashtag (#MillionKeyMovement), the keys also remind people that they are not alone in their struggles.
And that is a big part of what the patients and families get at St. Jude--a network of people to lean on who understand.
The staff who took the group around the hospital and, later, The Target House, one of St. Jude’s three facilities for patients and families who require long-term care, tell stories of families who became bonded for life after meeting there and patients who met at the hospital as children, grew up and got married.
That’s why, when asked to pick a word to describe his experience at the hospital and Vardi said “normal,” it made sense.
No one at St. Jude is made to feel like an outsider, ever, and everybody is treated the same whether they are a patient, a family member or a visitor. It feels more like a small, very well-run community where everybody is working toward a common goal--curing childhood cancers--than it does a hospital.
“If you had to use a word, I would say we felt normal the whole time,” Vardi concluded. “And that’s actually a big deal.”
Editor’s note: The caption on the photo featuring Signet executive Judy Fisher was updated post-publication to reflect the fact that Signet Jewelers Ltd. has made a $60 million committment to the hospital, not $16 million as originally reported.
The Latest

The 2025 Australian Open champion is the jewelry brand’s first athlete ambassador.

The West Village jewelry boutique’s new shop-in-shop is the cornerstone of Nordstrom’s revamped jewelry hall.

The Seymour & Evelyn Holtzman Bench Scholarship from Jewelers of America returns for a second year.

This past year, the manufacturer said it recorded below-zero emissions per carat of natural diamond.


The brand’s “Golden Strada” statement necklace features round, marquise, and pear diamonds that sparkle like Fourth of July fireworks.

JSA’s Scott Guginsky provided a list of nine security measures jewelers should observe while locking up for the long weekend.

The countdown is on for the JCK Las Vegas Show and JA is pulling out all the stops.

Located on Rodeo Drive, the store’s design was inspired by Hollywood and Los Angeles culture.

The new location continues the brand’s celebration of its 25th anniversary.

The online watch marketplace’s “Time Is Our Thing” campaign highlights the importance of time.

She will oversee strategic planning, fundraising, industry partnerships, and the launch of the Gem Legacy Campus in Tanzania.

Working with Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit and law enforcement, Pandora helped to shut down a large-scale counterfeit network in China.

The jewelry company has closed its three California brick-and-mortar stores, as well as its online shop, for now.

The company is providing the opportunity for an FIT student to work alongside master diamond cutter Willie Lopez in its workshop.

The jewelry store chain has reportedly been struggling with costs related to tariffs as well as tough retail competition.

Welcome warm summer days with red hot rubies perfectly chosen as July’s birthstone.

Co-founders Afzal Imram and Lin Ruiyin brought their son’s story of a cosmic egg, toadstool, and railroad to life in their new collection.

The best time to prepare for the holiday season is right now, according to columnist Emmanuel Raheb.

This year’s winner is Morgan Keefe, who is currently studying at GIA to be a gemologist.

The company is focused on modernizing the custom jewelry buying experience with e-commerce tools like product visualization and 3D styling.

Following its recent acquisition, the storied brand has updated its leadership team and regional managers.

AGS also named the recipient of its “Women in Leadership” scholarship.

The 20-karat yellow gold and diamond wrap ring is modeled after the Monstera plants in the garden of the brand’s Miami villa.

Rocksbox President Allison Vigil shared the retailer’s expansion plans, and her thoughts on opening stores in malls.

The creator of the WJA Chicago chapter is remembered as a champion for women in the jewelry industry and a loving grandmother.

The decline was consistent across age groups and almost all income groups, with tariffs and inflation still top of mind.