Founded by Now-12-Year-Old Boy, Cancer Foundation Headquartered in Parsippany

When he was 10 years old, Malcom Sutherland-Foggio, who dreamed of being both a rock star and an orthopedic docter, laid in a full body cast in a Philadelphia hospital bed and came up with an idea to help other kids fighting cancer, just like him.

“He was having chemo pumped into him, he didn’t have a lick of hair on his body and he said, ‘Somebody needs to make some noise about this,’” Sutherland’s mother, Julia, said.

Now more than two years after he was diagnosed with the bone cancer that forced doctors to remove his hip, the foundation Malcom started, “Make Some Noise: Cure Kids Cancer Foundation Inc.” has raised more than a quarter-million dollars.

“So far we’re only a year-and-a-half into it and I think it’s doing great,” Malcom, the CEO of the foundation, said from his home in Florham Park during a recent snow day home from school.

He added, “ I think we’re going to do even better this year.”

The foundation is run out of a 17,000 square-foot office on the Mack-Cali campus in Parsippany. Last month the foundation hosted a benefit dinner in Florham Park and Malcom, who also wants to be an orthopedic surgeon, performed three Led Zeppelin songs on his Gibson electric guitar, "Ramble On," "Immigrant Song" and "Stairway to Heaven."

 “I think the best way to spread the word is through music,” said Malcom, who added that he is a fan of classic rock bands like Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

Malcom, now 12, is in seventh grade at the Peck School in Morristown. He said that his experience fighting Ewing’s sarcoma made him want to someday be an orthopedic surgeon.

While he’s growing up, however, he’s happy to spend his time playing his beloved video games along with his two older brothers. He said his favorites are NHL 2011, Madden 2011 and Call of Duty Black Ops.

Malcom was diagnosed with cancer in December 2008, about six months after he started playing guitar. He went through six rounds of chemotherapy at in-patient treatment at a Philadelphia hospital before he had his hip removed, Sutherland said. After the operation he went through eight more rounds of chemotherapy.

 “I’m doing a lot better now,” he said. “Much better than I was during treatment.”

Still, it wasn’t his own plight that inspired him to start the foundation. About five months into his ordeal, a boy, not yet 3-years-old, died of cancer just a few doors down from Sutherland, his mother said.

“What bothered him was not only that traffic didn’t stop on the street outside, not even other families on the oncology floor knew about it and it troubled him that nobody knew about it,” Julia Sutherland said. “He said, ‘I have to start a foundation.’ There was just something behind it that was irrefutable.”

Malcom was already tech-savvy enough to start a website chronicling his progress for his classmates who worried about him. He put the same focus to work in brainstorming his foundation.

The foundation today boasts a board with more than a half-dozen leading cancer doctors from the most prestigious hospitals in the nation. The board makes recommendations as to what cutting-edge research could use infusions of cash. The foundation also solicits suggestions from other families with kids fighting cancer as to what sorts of research desperately need funds.

 Malcom said his fundraising goal for this year is a half-million dollars.

 “To have it help research the cures for pediatric cancers,” he said.

For more information or to get involved with Malcom’s foundation, visit www.makenoise4kids.org or call 973-830-0525. To learn more about Malcom himself, visit www.malcomspage.net.