St. Jude Hoards Billions While Many of Its Families Drain Their Savings

A series of sharp knocks on his driver’s side window startled Jason Burt awake.

It was the middle of the night on a Saturday in 2016. Burt was sleeping in his pickup truck in the parking lot of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, where his 5-year-old daughter was being treated for brain cancer. He’d driven more than 500 miles from his home in Central Texas to visit her.

A St. Jude security guard peered into the truck and asked Burt what he was doing. Burt explained...