A week ago, more than 300 golfers converged outside Chicago to play Medinah Country Club, one of the most revered and storied golf courses in the country, home to three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, the 2012 Ryder Cup, and the 2019 BMW Championship. Medinah will also host the 2026 Presidents Cup.
On Monday, golf was a secondary concern. Those gathered on the steamy Midwest summer day were there to save lives. The Saving Lives Honoree Event was also a celebration of John Fellowes, president and chief executive officer of Fellowes Brands, who received the Spirit of Life Award from City of Hope, an organization whose groundbreaking research into cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses was the beneficiary of the event, which raised more than $1 million to support its lifesaving research and benefit the year’s Expanding Hope Campaign.
City of Hope’s mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. Founded in 1913, City of Hope has grown into one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S. City of Hope research has been the basis for numerous breakthrough cancer medicines, as well as human synthetic insulin and monoclonal antibodies. City of Hope’s growing national system includes its Los Angeles campus, a network of clinical care locations across Southern California, a new cancer center in Orange County, Calif., and cancer treatment centers and outpatient facilities in the Atlanta, Chicago and Phoenix areas.
This wasn’t a one-off charity event for City of Hope for the Fellowes family — and more broadly, the national business products industry. It is a life-saving partnership between the business products industry and City of Hope that started in the early 1980s with Jack Miller, founder of Quill office products, who envisioned a higher purpose for the industry beyond selling office supplies and brought together five other industry leaders, including James Fellowes, John Fellowes’ father. The industry and Fellowes family have embraced the charity and over the years and have raised nearly $300 million for City of Hope.
John Fellowes is the third generation of Fellowes Brands leaders to be honored with the Spirit of Life Award from the City of Hope and bonds between the family and charitable organization run deep and have lasted more than 40 years. Though John Fellowes was honored for his work with City of Hope, he is quick to share the honor with the rest of the industry, which has rallied around the charity. He said there are more than 50 companies in the office products industry that come together every year to do small events that raise money for City of Hope, from golf outings to cycling challenges to charity walks.
“(The connection with City of Hope) is something that’s steeped in a lot of tradition and history, but from a selfish standpoint, it’s also been incredibly good for our industry because it brings industry relationships together in a way that are not necessarily business focused,” said John Fellowes. “I have great relationships with competitors of ours just by way of being at these events over the years, and it creates this human aspect and connection points between people, which has been really grounding and also created a lot of virtuousness underneath the layer of a business oriented industry.”
As the honoree this year, John Fellowes was able to bring the event to Medinah, a club he said he’s been coming to since he was six years old. And to make it more inclusive for those who do not golf, the event included a pickleball tournament and a field tournament that included bocce ball, croquet and putting. He said he was heartened by the 320 at the event.
“As I was driving in this morning, just seeing all of these golf carts, it really touched my heart in a deep way, not because of the mechanics or the bricks and mortar that’s behind it or any of that. It’s about all of these people coming together for a cause,” he said.
John’s father, James Fellowes, who was at the event, said his work with City of Hope was one of the most successful activities he has ever been involved in. “There’s a competitive spirit in this industry and people get the gloves on each day and go out and compete,” said the chairman of Fellowes Brands. “But we all rally around this and it brings people together for a common purpose.”
The story gets even more personal for the Fellowes family and company.
For the Fellowes family, the City of Hope’s mission became personal this year. Just about everyone’s family has been touched by cancer, including the Fellowes. But when Barb Gargano, a key 20-year employee who is director of customer service at Fellowes Brands, was diagnosed with cancer, the family and company rallied around her.
Last June, Gargano was on a quick weekend away with her husband when she became extremely ill. She went to the hospital in Florida with severe symptoms of COVID. The symptoms did not go away when she got home so she went to her local emergency room.
“They came back, they did all the scans, workups, blood and everything, and the emergency room doctor came in and said, ‘Okay, you have some respiratory things and the pain — that’s just your cancer, that’s your tumor. The doctor saw the shock on my face. And that’s how I found out that I had cancer,” she said.
The doctor had found a five-inch tumor on Gargano’s adrenal gland connected to her kidney. She was referred to an oncologist. She was home for a few days and her organs started shutting down. She spent about a month in the hospital. “For the first week, they couldn’t treat it because my cancer was mutating so quickly and it ended up within a few days I knew I had stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the tumor was a product of that as well,” she said.
Doctors didn’t expect her to live past the second week of her treatment. Her treatment at her home hospital was successful enough that Gargano stabilized. That’s when she turned to City of Hope, a charity she knew well and raised money for as an employee at Fellowes.
She met with Dr. Tulio Rodriguez, a hematologic oncologist specializing in the treatment of blood cancers such as lymphoma, leukemia and myeloma at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Chicago. Gargano said the first meeting was incredible.
“He and his team met with me for over an hour and sat just face to face, not across a desk like a doctor, but just with me,” she said. “He knew my charts. He had already reviewed it in advance. He told me I had a very aggressive cancer.”
She continued her treatment at her local hospital with aggressive chemotherapy, but the cancer was still there. Her local oncologist recommended stem cell treatment, but they only do the procedure at a few hospitals. Gargano called Rodriguez at City of Hope. She was eligible for CAR T treatment. CAR T-cell therapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses a patient’s own genetically modified immune cells to fight cancer. It is a form of immunotherapy that is typically used when other treatments have not been effective.
It was a difficult treatment that was made easier by her time at City of Hope and her own indomitable spirit. “I tried to stay competitive with myself,” she said. “They say I’m going to be in the ICU 14 days, I made it in 12. They say I’m going to be in the hospital eight weeks. I made it six. It was a new competition for me.”
Today, Gargano is waiting for her next appointment to see if she is cancer free. But she was feeling well enough to attend the City of Hope event and speak to attendees about her experience.
“Being in the industry, being at Fellows for 20 years now, I was in the audience at many of these events. We sponsored car washes at Fellowes for City of Hope; we did bake sales. I knew it was a good cause,” she said. “I was never on the other side of it, but I knew it went somewhere good. Being a patient and having to live in the City of Hope, that name, it just resonates with me so much now.
I’ve told so many people, it is like its own city. You walk in and there is every race, every age, every demographic represented. Everybody is so focused, good or bad on the cancer, they’re all there for the same thing. It’s not like a standard hospital where you have people having babies, you have trauma, you have diseases of all sorts. At City of Hope, everyone speaks the same language. They can see in your eyes when you’re having a good day or a bad day. Everyone lifts each other up.”
City of Hope was founded in 1913 in Duarte, Calif., just outside Los Angeles. At that time, tuberculosis was a major problem, and so tuberculosis patients were being sent out to the desert so that they didn’t infect other people and where the dry desert air was supposed to be helpful. A number of volunteers were taking care of the patients, who began coming there from around the country. When the tuberculosis vaccine eased the problem, City of Hope turned its attention to diabetes. City of Hope supported clinical research and treatment around diabetes and invented synthetic insulin and a number of other drugs, said City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago President Pete Govorchin.
“Diabetes gets under control, or at least to a point that it can be managed, and City of Hope decides it’s going to focus on cancer. And so that’s where we’ve been ever since,” he said, noting that City of Hope is now a Top 5 cancer center, according to U.S. News and World Reports and they do more bone marrow transplants than any facility in the country.
In 2020, City of Hope decided to broaden its reach outside of Southern California. So it bought the care delivery network Cancer Treatment Centers of America. City of Hope now has hospitals in Atlanta, Phoenix and Chicago.
The City of Hope event in Chicago is just one piece of its annual fundraising campaign. City of Hope’s work with the office products industry includes a board of about 30 executive leaders from companies like Staples, Office Depot and manufacturers like Fellowes Brands, 3M and Georgia Pacific, said Matt Dodd, senior executive director of corporate philanthropy for City of Hope.
“There are activities that take place all year long, and this is one of them,” he said. “So the funds from these events, whether it’s golf outings or employee giving activities or product sales promotions or direct mail, corporate match and gift programs, the majority goes to support the general fund.”
When asked if an event like the one at Medinah saves lives, Dodd did not hesitate: “It does. For sure it does. John (Fellowes) said it best in a video that I saw recently. He said, ‘The investments made 10 years ago, 20 years ago from events like this now have evolved and created new therapies and drugs and things that are saving lives today.’”
Dodd said a hundred million patients benefit each and every day from City of Hope research and therapy breakthroughs. “That’s quite a global impact that these events bring,” he added.
The Fellowes family has witnessed the long-term impact of the City of Hope and both John and James remain intimately involved. Dodd said when supporters like James Fellowes visit the City of Hope campus in California, they actively participate. “Jamie (James) Fellowes brings a notepad and he writes notes about everything he sees. He’s diving in to really learn about the impact and know what City of Hope has accomplished,” said Dodd.
Back at Medinah, John Fellowes reflected on receiving the Spirit of Life Award, City of Hope’s most prestigious honor, presented to Industry leaders around the world who have made a significant commitment to support those in need. Honorees are selected for their notable contributions to the community in which they live and the profession in which they work.
“It hit home this year, honestly,” he said. “I’ve been involved with City of Hope in one way or another for close to 30 years, and I’ve had people in my life, family members who struggled with cancer or with some terminal illness, and that’s something that has been a challenge to watch and to see. But this year, both my sister and Barb, one of our key leaders in our business, were diagnosed with cancer and that made it personal and took my commitment to another level.”