A Halloween display right here in Butler County might only be a seasonal display, but it’s one with a larger purpose.

Similar to a more permanent monument in Memphis, a Halloween display in a Meridian homeowner’s yard aims to raise awareness and funds for St. Judes Children’s Hospital.

But both of these displays, in a way, are focused on the world of entertainment, and both of them are about saving lives.

Sometime in the middle of the 20th century, there was a struggling entertainer who had not yet made a name for himself in Hollywood. He prayed to the patron saint of lost causes, asking, “Show me my way in life, and I will build you a shrine.”

He eventually found his success as the star of “Make Room for Daddy,“ later known as ”The Danny Thomas Show.“ And Danny Thomas kept his promise. The shrine he built, The St. Jude Children’s Hospital, opened in 1962 before a crowd of 9,000 people in Memphis.

In its 60 years of existence, St. Jude’s has had thousands of successes — thousands of lives saved. In 1966, a group of St. Jude patients were the first acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients to ever be successfully taken off therapy, based on evidence that remission can be sustained. A disease that was once thought incurable now has a 94% survival rate.

More amazing, all this work is done for free. No parent has ever received a bill for the Nobel Prize-winning efforts St. Jude’s has accomplished in saving children.

That’s a herculean effort, and so raising the money to keep that hospital going is itself a herculean effort. Which brings us to the other “monument” that’s about entertainment and about saving lives.

Leanne Feil of Meridian has set up a collection of grim grinning ghosts on her front lawn at 104 Marion Drive. The Oogie Boogie Man is there, as are Jack Skellington and Sally. Adding to the fun are two 12-foot bony and menacing skeletons, and a third, larger bag of bones with a jack-’o-lantern head.

And they all want you to donate to St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

The idea is, look at the spooOOOoooky ghosts — if you dare — and then, click on the QR code on display next to them. The QR code connects you with St. Jude, and this makes it easier for you to help out.

The idea of combining Halloween, a children’s holiday, with a hospital devoted to children, is actually a recent development. It started in 2020, when a TV station in North Carolina did a piece on the Halloween decorations outside the home of Jeff Robertson, in Holly Springs.

That attracted a lot of people to his house, so Robertson decided that he should use this as an opportunity to help others. He put up a QR code on his lawn, and urged that the money should go to a good cause.

In 2020, it was just him. The following year, 400 people did it. This year, it’s 425, including Leanne Feil, as reported in the Oct. 18 edition of the Eagle.

And now, you can help. Out of every $1 donated to St. Jude, 82 cents of it goes toward treatment, research and future needs of the hospital. You can save the lives of children.

To donate, go to www.stjude.org.

—LZ