MARBLEHEAD – Marbleheader Tim Sullivan is running his 11th Boston Marathon next Monday and fundraising for pediatric cancer research and patient care programs at Massachusetts General Hospital.
He said he is running in honor of Megan Sheehy and Sophia Maglione, both young girls who received treatment at MGH and died from pediatric cancer.
“My daughter’s best friend from childhood, Megan Sheehy, was a patient there, and she had osteosarcoma and received incredible care,” Sullivan said. “Unfortunately, for her, it was just such an aggressive cancer that she passed away in 2014.
“In 2015, I decided to run the race in her memory, and I thought I’d only do it one time. Along the way, I just met so many amazing people who cared for her, and I saw how well they knew her and her parents, and I realized just how amazing of a place it was. I started to run again, and I started meeting more families, and it just took off from there.”
One family he bonded with in 2018 was the Maglione family, and he has been running in Sophia’s honor since she died from a brain tumor in 2021.
“I’m doing this for the Sheehy and Maglione families, but I’ve also met many other families who continue to receive care from MGH. They have a wonderful program where they give treatment in those first few critical years, but they have a program where the families keep coming back so that they can evaluate the long-term health of their patients,” Sullivan said.
He said what’s “really the most important thing to me” is that, through running the Boston Marathon, he is a vessel for pediatric cancer awareness.
“I’ve worked in the pharmaceutical industry, so biotech, for most of my career, and most of the funding and research energy goes toward adult cancers,” Sullivan said. “There’s very little in the way of money and resources available for the study of childhood cancers, so to represent MGH and to help bolster that research program (is incredible).”
Sullivan has raised over $200,000 in the last decade running the Boston Marathon, but he is hopeful that even more can be raised for Mass General’s pediatric patients. His fundraiser link can be found here: tinyurl.com/tim-runs.
“One of the things that is so amazing to me about the program at MGH is the compassion that they show the families, and that’s really what jumped off the page to me,” he said. “They’re really treating the whole family, so if there are siblings involved, they have programs to help the siblings cope emotionally. It is expert, innovative care, but at the same time, the human side of it is really second to none.”
