Patty Thompson had no idea her son, Russell, was one of 184 athletes at Presbyterian College to get medically tested with Project Life.
She had no idea he was one of three who matched patients in desperate need of bone marrow transplants. And she had no idea that her son – a pitcher for Presbyterian’s baseball team – went through with the transplant last summer until friends notified her on Facebook that her son had been featured on the front sports page of a Greenville paper. The story itself was from USA Today.
“Some folks posted on Facebook, ‘We are really proud of your boy,’ and messages like that,” said Patty Thompson. “We went to the ballgame and one of the fathers had the article from Feb. 28. I just cried. I just thought about my son and two other young men who did this without hesitation.”
Russell was the first to undergo the final donation process. He and fellow pitchers Aaron Lesiak and Trey Hayes were all matches through Project Life. Lesiak, a Greenville native, was found to be a genetic match in December 2015 for a 54-year-old woman with acute myeloid lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.
“About a week after I donated, I got a call saying she lives overseas somewhere,” said Lesiak, a Greenville native who played at St. Joseph's Catholic School. “You just sit there thinking, ‘I'm in Clinton, and my cells went international.’”
Lesiak said that the Project Life drive was held more than a year ago. According to Be The Match, a national marrow donor program, on average, one out of every 540 registrants qualifies to donate to a patient.
While Thompson and Lesiak have been through the process, Hayes only recently found out he was a match.
“Since Aaron is my roommate, I thought maybe they were calling to do a story on him,” the Belton native said with a laugh. “They said, ‘No, you’re a match, too.' ”
“The odds of that are astronomical,” said David Lindsey, a cancer survivor who went through a bone marrow transplant 25 years ago. “I’ve never been able to even calculate even the thought of a baseball team at a small liberal arts college in South Carolina would have that many donors. It’s unheard of.”
According to Be The Match, every year more than 12,000 U.S. patients are diagnosed with life-threatening blood diseases and about 70 percent of patients needing a transplant do not have a match in their family. Consequently, they must rely on the national registry.
“Most people when they have to turn to a bone marrow transplant, that’s their last best shot of a cure,” Lindsay said. “I’m talking right now only because I had a bone marrow transplant. These three baseball players, they are truly helping to extend lives and potentially save lives. They have donated some hope.”
Patty Thompson said the boys were just living up to the Presbyterian College motto: “While we live, we serve.”
Baseball coach Elton Pollock asserted that Lesiak, Hayes and Thompson embodied the motto long before that donor drive. They mentor youth in Laurens County on weekends, assist local organizations to combat homelessness and eagerly participate in many other campus charities.
“They really believe it’s their responsibility,” Pollock said. “Each of them stepped up to the plate in a major way. They knew they would save lives. It's bigger than baseball. It's bigger than any of us. It's just a testament of how their lives will touch others, not just right now but for years to come.”
Thompson said she was shocked to find out her son had not only been a match, but had gone through the entire process without telling a soul in his personal life – including his girlfriend.
“But I wasn’t surprised,” she said. “That is in his character. I think what shocked me most is you don’t think of your son as being that grown up. But he’s 19, and he could do this without parental permission. They team the boys to serve at Presbyterian, and that’s what they do.”
She said should the transplants be a success, her son and his fellow donors will be allowed to meet their recipients in a year. But a donor does not need to know the patient to recognize the need.
Patty Thompson said she thinks of her son as a hero, but she said he was quick to downplay his role in the story. She said he was reticent to talk about it at all, even with his family.
“When I asked him why he didn’t tell us, he just said, ‘Why would I? It needed to be done,’” she said. “He thought it would be really conceited to lord it over people, I guess. He just did what he needed to do.”
Thompson said the “needle definitely hurts.”
“But for that little bit of pain you feel, to know you’re actually going to help somebody else and save their life, I would not hesitate to go do it all again.”
