Einar Gustafson; Inspired Cancer Fund

Einar Gustafson, whose battle with cancer when he was a young baseball fan more than half a century ago inspired the organization known as the Jimmy Fund, has died. He was 65.

Gustafson suffered a stroke and died Sunday afternoon at a hospital in Caribou, Maine, a statement from the Jimmy Fund said.

Dr. Edward J. Benz, president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which the fund supports, said: “His story is the story of our nation’s war on cancer, and over the past five decades, tens of thousands of people have rallied against cancer in his name. We certainly pledge to continue that fight.”

The official charity of the Boston Red Sox since 1953, the Jimmy Fund has raised more than $160 million.

Gustafson contracted a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1948, when he was 12 years old. He was one of the first patients to be treated with chemotherapy.

Dr. Sidney Farber, who established the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation, gave Gustafson the name “Jimmy” to protect his identity, and named his foundation the Jimmy Fund.

Young Gustafson was chosen to talk about baseball with broadcaster Ralph Edwards and to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” with the Boston Braves on Edwards’ national radio program. Warren Spahn and Eddie Stanky were among the baseball stars who befriended him.

The publicity started the outpouring of donations for cancer research and was the beginning of the Jimmy Fund.

“It was just a little bubble that mushroomed,” Gustafson once said.

His identity was a mystery until 1997, when his sister sent a letter with her annual donation to the Jimmy Fund, saying that he was alive and well. He had three daughters and six grandchildren, and worked as a truck driver, among other jobs, in Maine.

After his identity was revealed, he acted as an unofficial ambassador for the fund and was named honorary chairman in November 1999.

In 1998, he recalled his fellow patients from a half-century earlier who did not get well, such as David, a boy with blue eyes and blond ringlets and beautiful parents whom he described as “right out of the movies.” Einar and David often talked as they lay next to each other. Then David was gone.

“The doctors one day pulled the curtain around him, and . . . you wouldn’t know what happened,” he said. “I remember his mother and father crying.”

“Of course, millions of parents have been left crying,” he said with his voice trailing off. But he said he was amazed at how far cancer treatment for children has come.

“Before, they were just looking into a cardboard tube that was all black,” he said. “They were chipping and chipping away at the tunnel. Now, by God, there’s light in that tunnel.”