Haddonfield's Zachariah Murray fought cancer to become one of top runners in state

Zachariah Murray had literally been sick since the first day his mother Annie adopted him in Vietnam as a six-month-old.

He caught pneumonia every time the seasons changed.

He was in and out of the hospital so much, visits started to meld together.

There was one, however, that Annie still remembers vividly.

It was about 14 years ago at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Zachariah was getting treated for pneumonia yet again when his immunologists gave Annie the grim news.

“The originally told me he wouldn’t make it to be a teenager,” she recalled. “He wouldn’t be 13.”

It set her off.

“I got really mad,” she said. “Outside it says, ‘Hope Lives Here.’ What are you doing? You can’t take away the hope, we need the hope, keep working on it.”

The doctor then drew two interlocking circles on the wall. The first he said was 80 percent – 80 percent of the medical issues out there they understand and know how to treat. The second was 20 percent – what they don’t know.

Zacharaiah fell in the connecting section. Doctors knew his problems but couldn’t find any answers.

“We’re putting together a puzzle of a kid that we’ve never seen,” Annie said the doctors told her. “A kid that had these weird, eclectic things, and because we don’t know his background, we’re guessing.”

He had weak lungs and a weak immune system. His skin would break out in all sort of ways. He’s had pneumonia 17 times.

Now, the boy who could barely catch a breath, who needed a feeding tube for three years, is one of the fastest runners in the state.

The Haddonfield High School senior has the top 400-meter time in New Jersey during the indoor track and field season and won a South Jersey Group 2 championship in the event last week in Toms River.

He’ll vie for the Group 2 state title on Saturday.

“Running really helped me find who I am and what I want,” Murray said. “Once I started running, I knew that this was one thing I could pursue really for the rest of my life.”

A life neither he nor his mother take for granted.

Black market antibiotics

Zachariah looked healthy the first time Annie held him. Then night fell.

He developed a high fever, his breathing wasn’t right and he had the “worst case of scabies ever,” Annie said.

Those weren’t the only problems. The two were still in Vietnam and Annie didn’t speak the language, so she didn’t feel comfortable taking him to the hospital.

Instead, she found a clinic for foreigners run by French doctors. They took x-rays of Zachariah’s lungs and found he had bacterial pneumonia. He needed medicine.

“We went to them and gave them money to buy antibiotics on the black market,” Annie said. “Our goal was to get him well enough to get him here and get him to the emergency room.”

Annie had to wait three weeks anyway for the adoption process to sort out, so she took Zachariah to the clinic every day for checkups. Soon enough he got the OK to fly and Annie brought her son back to the states.

“We got home, dropped off our luggage and we went to our pediatrician and right to CHOP,” she said.

Like an episode of ‘House’

Zachariah was in and out of hospitals for the next four and a half years, but the family never had any answers.

Annie spoke with medical professionals from all over the country, including CHOP, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Yale. She even asked her eight brothers and one sister for all their doctors’ information.

It felt like an episode of House, Annie explained. Diseases kept getting ruled out, but no underlying cause was found.

“They’d never seen anything like it before,” she said.

Then, a few months after the 80-20 discussion at CHOP, a doctor made an unusual suggestion – Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

It fit the symptoms, but it was rare in kids his age.

Only 500 cases are diagnosed in children under the age of 14 in the United States each year, and it’s “uncommon” in children under three, according to the American Cancer Society.

But Zachariah was born in Vietnam, and doctors believe it might’ve been passed genetically through a mutation caused by Agent Orange during the war.

Three-and-a-half years of chemotherapy

Zachariah started chemotherapy when he was around the age of five and had it once a week, almost every week, for three and a half years.

He’d attend Haddonfield Friends School a couple times a week, but often had teachers and tutors helping him outside of class.

“He went to school all year round,” Annie said. “He had to make up the time from being sick, he went all year.”

He also had to have a feeding tube for roughly three years because, while he could eat, he couldn’t ingest the number of calories he needed per day.

The grind was difficult, but when Zachariah had the energy, he was outside.

“I was always interested in playing sports when I was young,” he said.

His mother’s family was very athletic. She played basketball and softball, her sister played softball at the Division-I level, her brothers hooped it up and much more.

“We used to have, literally, our own baseball team, that’s how I grew up (in Long Island),” she said.

That rubbed off on Zachariah, and when he went into remission around 9 years old, he wasted little time testing his own athletic chops.

Track comes calling

Zachariah tried almost every sport, but soccer was his first passion, mainly because he got to run.

When he was younger, running wasn’t possible because of his lung function, but the cancer treatments improved it dramatically.

It never occurred to Murray to try track until eighth grade though. That was the year his family moved from Cherry Hill to Haddonfield and he attended Haddonfield Middle School.

It was there Annie connected with one of Zachariah’s teachers, Michelle Cannaday.

“It was a bit tough at first,” Annie said. “Everybody knew each other and he really didn’t know anybody. He wasn’t the weird kid, but the kid on the outside. (Annie and the teachers) had a meeting and we were talking about things and they found out he liked to run, he’s a good runner, and I said I’d love to see him get involved with something that gets him apart of the group.”

So Cannaday, an assistant track coach, pitched the idea to Zachariah.

“I was hesitant,” he admitted.

At the same time, his cancer ratcheted back up causing neuropathy, which gave him terrible migraines and pain in both his hands and feet.

Ironically, running helped the pain.

Combine that with the connection he forged with his teammates, cross country and track became an integral part of his identity.

“I can feel really relaxed when I’m running and it’s a good time,” he said. “When you’re on a run with other people it’s a good time to socialize. You can’t do that when you’re at a soccer practice, the team was really welcoming. It was great.”

Pushing through injury, cancer 

By the time Murray got to his first spring season with the high school track team, his cancer was back in remission again.

His new head coach, Brian Makinson didn’t know anything about Murray’s past, but he noticed the youngster after just a few short weeks.

“During the practices and during the workouts you start to see where a normal freshman would start to cringe at some of the workouts and the volume we might do, he kind of owned it and accepted it,” Makinson said. “I say we’re doing 10 and he’s like, ‘Can we do 12?’ And that’s when I started to realize he’s not getting tired. He keeps on pushing and he doesn’t want to stop.”

Murray ran on the varsity 4x400 his first season.

“In my head I always knew he was going to be successful,” Makinson said. “You don’t really think much of a freshman, but once you stuck him in a couple races, you started to see the potential he had.”

Murray’s cancer popped up a third time as a sophomore, but by the spring of 2017, he was in remission again and has been steady ever since.

Murray ran into new problems his junior year though, as pulled his right hamstring during a chilly day during the winter, and then did the same to his left during the spring, ruining the end of both seasons.

Yet, through it all, he pushed ahead.

“He’s probably the hardest working kid that I’ve trained and the most willing,” Makinson said. “He’s never afraid. Track hurts. A lot of the workouts you’ve got to push yourself past the point of comfort and you have to push yourself to where the body is telling it to stop and you’re telling it to keep on going and I think that’s something he naturally does.”

He’s had to do it his whole life. It’s why Annie’s siblings call Zachariah their hero.

“He’s the most incredible guy for everything he’s gone through,” she said.

‘The most glorious thing’

Getting to this point was an accomplishment in itself. Then came the Ocean Breeze Invitational in New York on the final weekend of January. That’s when Murray won the 400 in 49.38 seconds – the fastest time in the state.

“It still hasn’t hit me yet,” he said. “Going into that meet I was just hoping to get under 50 (seconds).”

The time reset his goals. That’s why he wasn’t overly excited to win sectionals. It was a great achievement, but he wants more.

“When you’re the top kid in the state, it’s great if you win a sectional title, but if you don’t win Meet of Champs…,” Makinson said.

Zachariah’s hoping all the success will lead to a Division-I scholarship. Annie, on the other hand, is just enjoying a ride she was told she’d never have.  

“When he runs I see him smile,” she said, “and it’s the most glorious thing.”

Josh Friedman; @JFriedman57; (856) 486-2431; jfriedman2@gannettnj.com