St. Jude bone cancer survivor Adam Hopper inspires young lives through music

Adam Hopper’s right arm is shorter than his left. Most people don’t notice. They don’t know about the cancer that gnawed at his Kentucky childhood or the titanium prosthetic that stands in for bone in his upper right arm. They don’t know he’s a bone cancer survivor, treated at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital when he was 9. “It’d be like talking about your kneecap,” Adam said. “It never comes up.”

Adam’s story isn’t about what he’s missing, but what he’s made of. He’s attacked drumming — and life — with a fervor that makes the story of his right arm almost irrelevant.

“He’s never used cancer as an excuse,” his mom, Jane, said with pride, because this was how she raised him. 

Yet, the 39-year-old makes it a point to share his cancer story with his music students.

“There’s a lot of fragility in the mind space of kids,” Adam said. “Maybe they can glean some connection from my story to challenges they may have to overcome.”

Students share with him their own stories — stiff shoulders from car wrecks, childhood illnesses, tough home lives. Sometimes, they want to chat about what’s for lunch.

“He has a way of connecting,” Jane said. “There are kids who gravitate toward his strength, and he picks them up where they need encouragement and focus.”

It’s a reflection of how Jane and Adam’s dad, Tim, raised him — and how St. Jude supported their family — with high expectations and unwavering support.

If a guy like Adam, “with an arm and a half,” as he puts it, can be a great drummer, what can’t they do if they work hard?

“You see this man who had such a life-altering event happen to him at such a young age, but he didn’t let it stop him,” Noah Allen, a former student, said. “He used it to motivate us.”

If Adam can do it, they can do it, too.

A shot

Before Adam wielded his first drumsticks — and before cancer — life had a different rhythm. The thump, thump, thump of basketball. To be a Kentucky boy in 1995 was to be a Wildcats fan, to feel the electric hum of possibility, as if proximity to all that college basketball greatness — Tony Delk, Walter McCarty, Antoine Walker — could somehow make him great, too.

“I would wake up. Ball. Go to bed. Ball. Ball. That was me,” Adam said.

Adam can still hear the rhythm of it all: the squeak of sneakers, the coach’s shouts, the swish of the net, the roar of the crowd. 

He can still remember the feel of the terrible ache in his upper right arm. 

He ignored it at first. Yet, the pain persisted, creeping into his dreams and making it hard to sleep.

Adam’s dad took him to the doctor, where an orthopedic surgeon who saw Adam’s X-ray referred him for a biopsy. It was more than an ache — it was bone cancer.

“Our world went from a small family going to work, going to church, to all of a sudden, we were hit with this,” Tim said. 

Adam was referred to St. Jude, which confirmed a diagnosis of Ewing sarcoma. Adam’s treatment would include a limb-sparing surgery that “gave me a shot at saving my arm,” Adam said.

Gotta laugh

Adam woke up in bed at St. Jude. He moved slowly, pulling on clothes for a day of chemotherapy. The treatment would target his cancer cells but sap his strength, making simple movements feel monumental.

His parents had a rule: no lounging in pajamas all day. It was part of their commitment to his treatment, a full-time family job for the next year.

“They were there, encouraging and supporting, but they weren’t enablers,” said Dennis Wheeler, Adam’s childhood drum teacher and a close family friend. 

Adam’s parents included him in decisions about his care. “Adam would have been upset if we’d kept secrets,” Jane said. When his weight dropped and his doctor discussed a feeding tube, Adam tried harder to eat.

“It was probably motivating,” Jane said.

Just after his 10th birthday in September 1995, Adam underwent limb-sparing surgery. The surgeon removed his right humerus and deltoid, replacing them with a titanium prosthesis.

Chemotherapy continued. 

“Adam would be so weak he couldn’t get into the building,” Tim said. His face, even his lips, were white. “But as soon as St. Jude put blood and platelets in, it was like a flower that was about to die, and you would give it water and it would come back to life.”

Despite everything, Adam found excuses to laugh. Because that’s how Adam is.

“It’s a tough one to be like: ‘We gotta wake up with this and be sad every day?’ So, we just put on a good face and keep truckin’.”

It’s amazing

Adam’s grandfather had been a band director, his mom played clarinet, and his dad was a trumpeter. But Adam wanted to play drums.

“I don’t care who you are, drums are cool,” Adam said. 

By the time he completed cancer treatment, fifth grade was over, and he was a year behind his peers in band. That didn’t deter Adam. That summer, Adam met Wheeler at church each week for private drum lessons.

“I was pretty good at it naturally,” Adam said, despite the rod in his right arm. He practiced with the intensity he’d once given to basketball.

“When we saw we might need to adapt or get better, he dealt with it. We worked,” Wheeler said.

By high school, Adam was playing out of Wheeler’s college music book.

Adam’s small-town high school had no marching band, no football team. Yet, Adam’s ingenuity shone. With no set of timpani to practice on at school, he turned to unconventional tools at home — even books and piles of clothes — to get the sounds he needed. 

When Adam got to college on a drumming scholarship, “I think he slept in the music room in college, he was so far behind,” Tim said.

Jane and Tim witnessed Adam’s transformation at his junior recital, where he performed complex percussion solos on marimba, vibraphone and drum set.

“I couldn’t believe how far he’d come,” Tim said.

Butterfly effect

Today, Adam is a composer and performer, a band director and teacher.

“I’ve played a lot of music for having an arm and a half,” Adam joked.

“Eighty percent of my life is based around things St. Jude made possible. I met my wife, Sarah, in college. I went to that college because I got a scholarship to play drums. I wouldn’t have played drums if I didn’t have the opportunity to go to St. Jude,” Adam said.

We adopted our son, Jack, from Thailand in 2019. So, you could play the butterfly effect game for anything. But that sort of trajectory that ended up being the rest of my life started with going to St. Jude.”

Having been given a second chance at life, Adam has dedicated himself to helping his students make the most of their own lives.

“He's a great leader, a beyond-amazing instructor, and he pushed us in a way that made us want to be better for ourselves,” Allen said.