We've met a lot of extraordinary people over the past 25 years during our Cat Country Cares for St. Jude Kids Radiothons.

One of those extraordinary people was Cousin Vinnie, a man who worked tirelessly to raise money any way he could (quite literally) for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

I only ever saw him once a year during our radiothons. We usually didn't know when he was going to show up. We would be going about, doing the radiothon on the air and you would turn around, and there he was.

He would talk with us on the air for a few minutes and at the end, like it was no big deal, he would put six, seven, or eight thousand dollars -- or more -- on the table for us to give to the kids of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

The running joke among us was that with a name like "Vinnie" and being that he was from New Jersey, we didn't want to know how he was able to raise so much money. But when I say he worked tirelessly, that's not a big enough word to describe what he did for the kids of St. Jude.

Cousin Vinnie passed away a number of years ago, but while he is no longer with us, we remember him during every radiothon.

Thank you, Cousin Vinnie.

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