Stronghold of Hope

Tribute to James Sheridan

On April 11, 1912, my Dad, James Sheridan was born in Hazelton, Pennsylvania to a coal minor and his wife. He was the second of three sons. As Dad grew it became obvious to his parents and teachers that he had some very special gifts, including an incredible aptitude for math and science. He excelled in school, played the trumpet in his high school marching band, and enjoyed camping and hiking in the mountains with his father. He also worked while he was in high school; 15 hours a week in a clothing store and later 54 hours per week as an elevator operator.

Dad's parents could not afford college and he might have ended up in the mines but for the money he had saved, the intervention of his high school principal and assistance from a state senatorial scholarship. He was admitted to Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Melon University) in Pittsburgh, PA. He planned to become a mining engineer, but during his freshman year all thoughts of this disappeared as it became apparent to him that he was destined to be a chemist.

During his early years and throughout his lifetime, Dad had an abiding faith in God. He was often frustrated with organized religion because as he put it, "They wouldn't let ME talk to God." Dad believed that God communicated directly with His followers if they would just listen and he believed in miracles as God's answer to everyday prayer. This belief played a major part in the formulation of his goals. In his teens, Dad spent a great deal of time thinking about the course his life should take, and in the end, decided to ask God for the knowledge that would help him find a cure for cancer. The switch to chemistry came when Dad began to have a recurring dream in which he saw a chemical formula. He did not understand the formula and could not find anyone to explain it to him. Several events and another dream would send Dad down the path that he followed until his health failed him in his 80's.

The first event occurred in April of 1931 during Dad's sophomore year at Carnegie Tech. The college was having an open house for high school students. Dad was working on an experiment, which resulted in a beaker of yellow liquid being left on his desk. Two students asked, "Is that chromate in that beaker?" Dad said, "Yes." The students asked how to get it out and Dad told them all you had to do was add an acid. Dad thought any acid would do and selected one at random and poured it into the beaker. Much to everyone's surprise and delight the solution separated into bands of color as in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Others tried the experiment and got the same result; however, only the acid picked at random produced the colorful display.

The second event was Dad taking a special course called "Theory and Thermodynamics of Solutions." This incident became a favorite family story over the years. As a joke, Dad pointed his finger at his professor Dr. Jake Warner (later president of Carnegie Tech) and said, "What is the DeBye Theory?" Jake responded, "You are not ready for that yet." After the summer break, Dad chanced to meet Jake who pointed his finger at him and asked, "What is the DeBye Theory?" Dad replied, "You said I was not ready for that yet." To which Jake said angrily, "Young man when you ask a question you are ready for the answer. I want you to take my Thermodynamics class." Dad explained that he had not had the two years of physics required, but Jake said he did not care and Dad took the course. The following year, Jake said to Dad, "Why aren't you in my thermodynamics class?" Dad said he had already taken it. Jake did not care, so Dad took the class for the second time. The following year the same thing happened and Dad took the class for the third time. It happens the theory of Entelev®/Cancell® now Protocel® is bound up in the DeBye Theory and Dr. Jake Warner made sure Dad never forgot it.

A third incident and the one that convinced Dad that he was on the right path occurred while doing research in the library. He had gone to read some bound scientific articles that were printed one after another in the text. As he searched for the correct references he noticed the title of an article, "The Formula" at the bottom of the page followed by the formula which he had seen so often in his dreams. He sat there for quite sometime looking at the words and the formula without turning the page to read the article. He had the feeling that this was an important moment. As he sat there he said to God that if this article referred to cancer he would know he was on the right track. He turned the page and discovered that the formula was that of a carcinogen.

In 1935, Dad went to work for Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan. Previously he had worked as a chemist for a company in Pittsburgh where the secretary was named Estelle Marie Azinger. Apparently the young chemist was the center of much speculation and attention from the young women employed there. As Dad told it, one Saturday, Estelle asked him if he had eaten his lunch. When he said, "No, why?" She replied, "Well then I think I'll let you take me to lunch." Mom always laughed when Dad told this story but never denied it. Thus, began one of the great romances of all time. In 1935 when Dad made the move to Michigan, he asked Estelle to marry him, but she was fearful of leaving home and a large motherless family that depended on her. Dad went alone. He returned on visits, but finally came the ultimatum. He told Mom he would not be back, he loved her but he had much to do. Fearful that he meant it, Estelle agreed and they were married on December 26, 1936. Their union lasted 64 ½ years. The family eventually grew to five when in 1940 Dennis Michael was born, followed by Margaret Ann and James Edward. I, Marge or Peg as the family calls me, am fond of telling people I am one of the lucky one's who was not brought up in a dysfunctional family. My mother and father were wonderful people whose undying devotion to God, each other, and their children was the glue that held us together. My brothers and I have such wonderful memories of the times spent with our parents and each other.

In September 1936 before the marriage took place, Dad had the dream that brought together all the events of the past. During a nap, he saw the bands of color of the rainbow, which represented the respiratory enzymes. Each color represented an enzyme at a specific redox level. The electrons from the DeBye Theory represented energy units in the respiration moving from glucose to oxygen via the respiratory system. Dad awoke knowing that he had his "Marching Orders." (I would recommend reading an eBooklet by Tanya Harter Pierce available at www.outsmartyourcancer.com for a more detailed explanation of the science.) Three years later, Dad bought his first white mice and began his work mostly at home in his spare time.

"The Project," as the family came to refer to it, was always part of our life. In fact my brother, Dennis, was one of the original recipients of Dad's formula. Dennis had surgery and developed a Keloid Scar. For some reason, it was mother who suggested that they give him Dad's formula to see what would happen to the scar. It went away. I had an even more dramatic demonstration of this when my sister-in-law married a man who had had surgery for a kidney stone. He had the worst Keloid Scar I have ever seen. It looked like a heavy purple rope on his skin and stretched from back to front. When I told him about Entelev®, he decided to try it. He remained on it for 11 months. Now you can barely tell the scar was ever there but if you look closely you can see a thin silvery line of normal scar tissue.

We children were involved with all aspects of Dad's career and spent countless hours talking about "The Project", working with Dad, praying, sharing Dad's dreams, which were sometimes quite funny in nature, and generally living with "The Project" all the years of our lives. We came to embrace our father's goal to somehow get "Jim's Juice" to the people no matter what obstacles were placed in our path. Dad did not want to personally benefit financially from the knowledge he felt was a gift from God. During his lifetime he gave away the "juice" to those who requested it. Since there was obviously expense associated with such an endeavor, people often helped with fund raisers to pay for chemicals and related items and a foundation, called The Eden Foundation, was set up for donations to buy materials for experiments. The foundation still exists and all monies continue to go to research. Volunteers have always run it. On three different occasions, relatives or friends left money to my mother for her to take a vacation or do something for just herself and each time the money went to "The Project".

During these years the formula had many names. The first we remember was KC49, but for years the family as well as friends referred to it as "Jim's Juice." When Dad decided to name it, he gave it a great deal of thought and came up with Entelev®. He picked the name because he said it referred to the Greek work, Entelechy, which Dad always said meant to him, "That part of man which only God understands."

Probably in the past the "juice" was best known by the name Cancell®. This came about in the 1980's. Through someone Dad knew, an early version of the formula was passed onto a chemist. Through this chemist, a man named Edward Sopcak, a metallurgist, obtained the information. He was very interested in pursuing the work and tried making it himself. He contacted Dad and they began to work together. Mr. Sopcak was a real blessing to Dad and they became friends. He manufactured Entelev® (which he renamed Cancell®) and met with my Dad every two weeks or so for lunch and afternoon meetings to discuss "The Project." They had many discussions on how to tweak the formula to make it more effective. Mr. Sopcak began giving away Cancell® just as Dad had always given away Entelev®. He was often the spokesman for "The Project" during those years. Mr. Sopcak loved to take on the powers that be and challenge them to debate. This left my Dad free to keep a lower profile and concentrate on the chemistry, experimentation and to think. At least that is what Dad always told us he was doing when he appeared to be doing nothing.

In the early 1990's, both Dad and Mr. Sopcak's efforts were getting a great deal of attention from the media as well as the government. The National Cancer Institute decided to test the formula and got very positive results. They then sent Dad a letter stating that they did not plan to pursue the matter. I will always remember the shock with which this letter was greeted. Dad sat for days with it in his hand not believing the contents. The test results had been sent to him and he knew the formula had worked. At that time, I was reminded of an incident that took place at a camp where we were vacationing around 1974. All the extended Sheridan Clan met for a week together. I had asked Dad to update me on just what was going on since I lived out of state. As we were talking, he again told me how he had asked God for the knowledge to cure cancer and added that he had also told God that he wanted neither fame nor money from this knowledge. When he said it, I had a physical reaction as a shiver shot down my spine and I felt tightness in my chest. I knew that day that whatever God's plan for Dad's formula, it would not happen during his lifetime on this earth. I do not usually trust my premonitions, but when the letter came from NCI, I knew for sure that this one was true.

My brother, Jim, was very angry about the letter from NCI. He tracked down the doctor who had overseen the tests and asked WHY? The reply was, "Anything that works that good must be too toxic for humans to take." My brother explained it is non-toxic and the response was "Mr. Sheridan has never proven that." That was a fact which could not be disputed. The toxicity test must be run in a FDA approved lab in order to be valid. On three different occasions the tests were contracted for, and then, mysteriously the lab declined to do them. To show how ridiculous things often got, in an earlier experience just when we thought the key had been found to move Dad's work forward, his efforts were rejected because "he could not prove he owned the idea."

In the mid 1990's, Dad's health began to fail and the Sheridan family and Mr. Sopcak decided to separate their efforts, because Sopcak did not agree with how the formula worked and wished to go in the direction of homeopathic medicine and diet. Mr. Sopcak wrote a letter to all those he had supplied with Cancell® stating that Entelev® and Cancell® were the same and that it belonged to the Sheridans. Meanwhile, Mr. Sopcak was going to pursue homeopathic medicine. Sadly, Mr. Sopcak's health failed not too much later as well. In 2001, Dad and Edward Sopcak died within weeks of each other. I wonder if they are up there discussing how to tweak the formula as in days of yester year.

These events left us floundering for a time, but as always we were blessed with friends and family who were interested in "The Project." As someone once said, a good general needs to be surrounded by loyal troops and we have seen many over the years. I would like to mention only a few and thank them. One of the first people to ever get the gift of Entelev® was a friend of Dad's named Chuck Fossati who was suffering from cancer. When Chuck returned to health, he and his wife Mindy bought the pint bottles for Entelev® for many years and provided Dad with an office at their business after he retired from the law firm with which he was associated. (Dad was also a chemical patent attorney who had studied the law and passed the bar during the time he worked for Dow Chemical Company.) Chuck passed away some time ago, but not from cancer. His wife Mindy has remained faithful to "The Project". She is the secretary/treasurer for our group and also the administrator of "The Eden Foundation". The family owes Mindy a great deal. Another friend, Warren Mertens, who was an accountant, also helped Dad in numerous ways. He was often our calm voice of reason when problems arose. Mr. Mertens passed away in the 1990's. We recently lost another member of our team. His name was Borys Ryzyj. While a pre-med. student, he became interested in Dad's work. He spent many hours sorting papers and organizing thousands of notes made by Dad as well as providing a sounding board for Dad in those last days before his health failed. John Spath and his law firm most particularly his secretary, Traci Jones, have also supported our efforts over the years with help with legal issues.

"The Project" might have ended if it had not been for the efforts of another chemist named Tony Bell. Dr. Bell's brother was another recipient of Entelev®/Cancell® who did very well. Dr. Bell became associated with the family and is now acting as our chemist. He worked with those now manufacturing Protocel® to bring it out as a health aid and has spent countless hours answering questions on the phone for anyone who contacts him. His efforts and dedication also brought us Protocel®/Cancell® Formula (#50). The original Protocel®/Entelev® Formula (#23) is the updated version that Dad and Mr. Sopcak worked on until the late 1980's. However Dr. Bell noted that there was a time when certain conditions reacted better than at other times. He and Borys were able to track down through the help of Ed Sopcak's daughter, Mary, what change was used by Dad and Mr. Sopcak during this time and thus Protocel®/Cancell® Formula (#50) came to be. What formula is recommended depends on each individual's reasons for taking Protocel®. Along with Dr. Bell came his friend and co-worker, Eilert Ofstead, who has also been of a great deal of assistance in furthering our efforts. He helped with the chemistry as well as with computer work and continues to offer sound advice to the family.

I would like to add that these people have all acted as volunteers for many years giving of their time and resources to keep James Sheridan's work alive. Not just the family, but the world owes them a great debt.

The family is also grateful to Leanne Breiholz, Jim Sheridan's granddaughter, who has stepped forward from the next generation to help with research and in other ways over the years. It is nice to have the next generation represented. Recently, two other grandchildren, Laura Grove and Anita Sheridan, have joined the organization as volunteers.

I would be remiss if I did not mention two others, both great women, and their husbands who have become such a blessing to "The Project". First, Kathy Buccarrelli who many years ago decided to host a picnic in the Pennsylvania/Ohio area for survivors who had taken and individuals who were taking Entelev®/Cancell® and then Protocel®. This picnic had grown to the point where a hall and a caterer had be hired and people actually traveled from all over the country to attend. It was a place where people could come to meet others, ask questions and get support for their personal situation. The Sheridan family and team thanks you Kathy, and of course, her husband Frank, for all their efforts. Unfortunately, the picnic was suspended a few years ago because Kathy and her husband could no longer host. However, in September of 2009, a Meet-and-Greet was held in Akron, Ohio, with quite a number of people attending.

The other woman is Elonna McKibben. Elonna has shared her own story with so many and has done so much to spread the word about the benefits of Protocel®. I am writing this to be a link on Elonna's latest voluntary effort as she seeks to answer questions for those interested in Protocel® and shares her experience and knowledge about this product. So many people have benefited from Elonna's dedication to this work and to the support her husband, Rob, has also given to us.

There are many others who have helped along the way that I have not specifically mentioned, but you remain in our hearts and we are grateful for what you all have done. I must thank the fine men who came on board in 2000 and are now the manufacturers of Protocel®. They keep a low profile but are working on "The Project" while also holding down other jobs. Thy have done a lot in the past 10 years and the world has benefited. These are only the latest among the many that have stepped forward in faith to embrace "The Project".

Thousands have taken Entelev®/Cancell®/Protocel® over the years with wonderful results. If this is to live on and become accepted as a treatment, it will be made possible with the help of those people whose lives were affected like Kathy and Frank and Elonna and Rob.

In conclusion, I would like to quote from something my Dad wrote many years ago. I believe it speaks to us all now.

I always felt this "Project" was on God's timetable. I pray that the revolution has begun.

Revised January 2010