pancakes just outside the St. Louis Lambert Airport on Day 14. “She got his information. She knows his name, his email, his Linked In, everything.”
The weekend of June 26th was not only the midway point of the trip but also the focal point for a very emotional celebration for us. One year earlier – on June 26, 2014 at 9:41 p.m. – as the blood of a total stranger dripped began to drip into my wife’s body, I cranked up the iPod in her hospital room on the 5th floor of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins and played the Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” and, well, someone did.
On that same afternoon – just five hours earlier and a few doors down the hallway – Maria Dennis, a longtime Baltimore radio personality who works for my direct competitor at CBS Radio via Mix 106.5, had a bone marrow transplant in an effort to survive a leukemia diagnosis just as dreadful as Jenn’s.
During their journey and fight for their lives during the spring and summer of 2014 on the leukemia floor at Johns Hopkins, they became confidants, good friends and survivors.
8
Both of their lives were saved – by two complete strangers hailing from two different parts of the world – on the same day, literally 100 feet apart.
Without the bone marrow registry and the incredible kindness of their human spirit, these two women would not be alive.
Jenn will not be able to meet her donor until next summer. He’s in Germany.
Maria got the word that her donor was from the United States and on the eve of the one-year mark – that’s a variation from the German law, which mandates a two-year waiting period.
As you can imagine, she was unsure of what to say or write to the man who saved her life last June 26th.
8And a year later, Jenn and I were in St. Louis ordering pancakes over coffee and catching up because I’d been to Houston and Dallas without her after she threw out the first pitch four nights earlier in Tampa and we parted ways in the Fort Lauderdale airport on Wednesday.
“She texted me on Wednesday and asked me what I’m going to do when I get my donor’s information,” Jenn told me as we ordered. “I told her to write him back and she did. And then he wrote her back last night.”
At this point, I think all of us can only imagine what we would say to the person who saved our life? Or what that person might say back after saving the life of a perfect stranger?
Jenn then continued. “She forwarded me the notes and wants me to read them,” she said.
It was a good thing the table had its own napkin holder.
As we simultaneously read their letters back and forth over the past 24 hours, the two of us sat openly sobbing for 30 minutes in a diner in St. Louis realizing the magnanimous and overwhelming generosity of all of it and what we’re doing on this tour. It was June 26th. Exactly one year from the day her life was saved by this German angel we can’t wait to meet.
After we composed ourselves, we began driving downtown to do Howard Balzer’s radio show before our Pappy’s stop en route to Busch Stadium. Jenn drove and I googled her donor. His name is Randall Braun. I looked him up on Linked In.
8Would you like to know what Randall Braun does for a living?
He builds stadiums.
He’s a part of an architecture team in Kansas City that has built many of the ballparks I’d see on my MLB tour.
He also loves baseball.
I’ve never met him or spoken to him but we’ve exchanged some emails. I will have him on the radio show sometime soon to tell me his story.
It’s a crazy world. This has been a crazy journey.
An hour later we were on the radio with Howard Balzer. Two hours later we were eating BBQ at Pappy’s with Jon Lester. And five hours later we were setting up a swabbing station at Busch Stadium and eating hot dogs and drinking beer at a Cardinals-Cubs midsummer tilt a few blocks from the Mississippi River under the Gateway Arch.
During the third inning of the game, I got a text from
