Thousands of people packed Franklin Park Zoo this week for the Jimmy Fund Clinic's 33rd annual Summer Festival, a rain-soaked but joyful gathering that brought together families whose children are living with pediatric cancer. Kids got their faces painted, met costumed princesses and superheroes, and filed through the zoo's newest penguin habitat, even as steady rain fell over the Jamaica Plain grounds.
The turnout held despite the weather, according to WBZ NewsRadio, whose reporter Kyle Bray found families lining up as early as 11 o'clock to get into the festival. Lisa Scherber, Dana-Farber's director of patient and family programs, told the station that families showed up anyway, rain or no rain. Scherber has run the festival since it began and has spent more than two decades at the Jimmy Fund Clinic, where the kids call her the “Play Lady,” according to background from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The outdoor setting is not incidental. Franklin Park Zoo offers a controlled environment where children undergoing chemotherapy, many of whom have compromised immune systems, can safely gather outside. Clinic staff also offered an in-clinic “Zoo Week” of animal-themed crafts and murals as an alternative, per the same Dana-Farber account.
A Day for Kids to Just Be Kids
One parent at the festival, identified only as Jason, put it simply to the station: the event lets families affected by pediatric cancer spend a day just being kids. Among the attendees was a boy named Leo, who is currently undergoing treatment at the Jimmy Fund, per the WBZ NewsRadio report.
The festival's design intentionally mixes newly diagnosed patients with long-term survivors. At last year's 32nd festival, roughly 3,500 participants representing more than 600 families gathered at the zoo, bringing together kids in active chemotherapy alongside former patients who've been cancer-free for up to 20 years, according to CBS News. That peer pairing is meant to give newly diagnosed families a visible sense of hope.
This year's crowd also got a look at Penguin Coast, the zoo's $21 million outdoor habitat for endangered African penguins that opened in June with geothermal controls to regulate pool temperatures. Zoo New England has described the exhibit as part of a broader, multi-phase renovation of the zoo's African Experience area, and Hoodline covered the penguin habitat's debut back in June.
Roots Going Back to a Radio Broadcast in 1948
The Jimmy Fund traces back to May 1948, when a national radio broadcast featured a 12-year-old lymphoma patient nicknamed “Jimmy,” later revealed to be Einar Gustafson. Gustafson's identity was kept secret for decades to protect his privacy, and he lived a full life after being cured of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The Boston Red Sox took over as the Jimmy Fund's official charity partner in 1953, after the Boston Braves left for Milwaukee, a relationship that remains one of the longest-running sports-charity partnerships in the country.
That partnership was on full display last month, when the 2026 WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon raised a record $7.15 million over two days at Fenway Park, pushing the annual radiothon's total past $87 million since it launched in 2002, as Hoodline reported in its coverage of a Haverhill singer's telethon appearance. The 36-hour broadcast featured interviews with current patients, doctors, and sports figures.
Progress Since Farber's First Remission
When Dr. Sidney Farber founded the Children's Cancer Research Foundation in 1947, pediatric cancer was almost universally fatal. Today, the Jimmy Fund Clinic treats children with cancer. Farber's work remains part of the Jimmy Fund's history.
Funding for cancer research remains an important issue, though. September's designation as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month exists in part to spotlight pediatric cancer, making community fundraisers like the zoo festival and the Fenway telethon central to sustaining clinical trials and patient support programs.
Franklin Park Zoo, in Jamaica Plain and operated by Zoo New England, is a facility with animal exhibits.
