He held his mother when she died of breast cancer. His stepmother died of ovarian cancer, his father of prostate cancer. He has survived prostate, mouth and skin cancers.
Huntsman was at President Nixon's side in 1971 when Nixon signed legislation declaring a "war on cancer." He kept the pen - and has tried to keep the promise.
He's put around $275 million into building the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, and arranged his businesses and charities to keep pumping money into cancer research and care far in the future - earning him a "medal of honor" from the American Cancer Society tonightfriday night.
"I'm never going to stop building as long as I'm alive," Huntsman, 71, said Thursday. "Even after I'm dead, the [family's] charitable foundation will keep building. This is a process that will go on , we believe, until cancer is cured."
Huntsman will receive the cancer society's highest award at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, sharing the stage with three others, including Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who has brain cancer. Kennedy is being honored for his support of cancer research funding, including leading the passage of the National Cancer Act, which authorizes $4 billion a year in federal cancer research.
Cancer has been Huntsman's life cause for the past 15 years. He and his wife, Karen, donated $100 million in 1995 to build the Huntsman Cancer Institute and another $125 million in 2000 to expand it and fund research. The hospital will double its beds in 2011, and Huntsman has guaranteed $30 million if the money isn't raised from other donors.
He said his family's foundation - he put $700 million in it last year - is guaranteed to give 40 percent of its worth to cancer research, care or education. He also spends time raising money for the institute and said much of the profit from his new business dealings, including real estate development in Idaho, funds the institute.
The goal? "It is really to find the cancer cell at birth, kill it and let the person lead a normal life," he said.
With more than 49,000 outpatient clinic visits and 2,700 surgeries last year, the institute emphasizes education; having physicians and researchers work together to treat cancer so that patients have quick access to promising treatments; and researching the genetic causes of cancer with its access to the world's largest population database. Researchers at the institute or its owner, the University of Utah, have found genes linked to breast, colon and melanoma cancers.
Huntsman, founder and chairman of Huntsman Corp., a worldwide chemical company, maintains there is "absolutely no linkage" between the products his company produces and cancer. Instead, he points to vehicle emissions and industries like Utah-based U.S. Magnesium, once considered the nation's top toxic polluter, as possible environmental causes of cancer.
Mary Beckerle, the institute's executive director, credits Huntsman for the institute's focus.
"Mr. Huntsman is pretty special in the sense that he really gets it, that research is the hope for the future," she said. "Huntsman Cancer Institute is an incredible gift of healing and hope to everyone who faces cancer, and it simply wouldn't exist if it weren't for Jon Huntsman."
Patients rave about everything from the compassion and competency of the doctors and nurses to the food and valet parking. Huntsman wants it that way, emphasizing to staff they must provide a top-notch experience and stay positive, believing optimism is as good an antidote as chemotherapy.
"I make darn sure that with the amount of money we put into that, that it is spit and polished and people are the highest quality," he said.
Wearing a hot pink hat while being treated for breast cancer this week, Barbara McPherron, 70, recalled once meeting Huntsman in the parking lot. He asked how she was being treated and told her to call him if it wasn't good enough.
She has had no complaints in the five years she has needed care. "The doctors are just first class. I'm so grateful to be at this hospital," she said.
Helen Giannis, who was about to start her last chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer this week, said Huntsman deserves the honor. "When I pull in and I look at this building I think, 'Wow, if we could just do a little piece to help humanity like he has,'" said Giannis, who calls the nurses her "network of angels."
Patty Geertsen's eyes filled with tears as she talked about Huntsman. While receiving chemo for the breast cancer that has spread to her bones, the American Fork woman was crocheting burp rags and baby blankets for her teen daughters' hope chests. She doesn't know if she will be alive when they are ready to use them.
"I would love to meet him one day," she said. "It's amazing to me a man would give so much of his own to help others."
