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HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. -- Leukemia survivor Mary Travers enfolded Mary DeWitt Hessen in an emotional embrace. "From the moment your bone marrow cells went into my body, I knew I was going to be OK," Travers, a member of legendary folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary, said to the stranger who saved her life.
"This is a very special woman to whom I owe everything," Travers said after meeting Hessen for the first time before a sold-out concert Sunday at the Ravinia Festival.
The women learned each other's names and spoke on the phone in April, exactly one year after the transplant. The National Marrow Donor Program requires donors and recipients to remain anonymous for a year. Then they can meet if both agree.
The women sat side by side backstage, clasping hands as Hessen's husband, Mike, watched with daughters Laura, 14, and Diana, 13. Besides their shared first name, both have two daughters. When she discovered that, Travers said, "I thought, 'This was meant to be.'"
Peter Yarrow, Travers' bandmate, was eating in an adjacent room and couldn't resist popping in with a plate of salad to meet Hessen.
"Salad, donor salad," he announced.
Hessen, 46, sells insurance in Lake Orion, Mich. She joined the registry when a boy at her church was diagnosed with leukemia. She wasn't a match for him. After she found out she was a match for someone else, she almost decided she didn't want to meet the recipient. "You never know who you're going to help," Hessen says.
Travers, 69, a longtime Democratic activist, joked before knowing the identity of her donor that she hoped it wasn't a Republican. "So I get on the phone with Mary and I say, 'Oh, we had this joke.' And there's this pause, and she says, 'But I am a Republican.' It has added a certain kind of vigor to my bones, but it hasn't changed my throat -- or my politics."
Travers was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004. After five weeks of chemotherapy, doctors told her, "'You were supposed to go into remission, and you haven't.' ... I was a very sick puppy."
The National Marrow Donor Program was created in 1987 and provides about 250 transplants a month, says Kevin Meyer of the organization's Great Lakes region. "Every day, 3,000 people are looking for a match."
Bone marrow transplants can help people with leukemia, lymphoma and 70 other diseases. Only 30% of patients find matches in their own families, Meyer says. The rest, like Travers, must hope for a match in the registry.
Donors used to be given general anesthesia while marrow was extracted from their hip bones with a needle. Now most donations involve a newer procedure that is similar to donating blood.
"When people say 'transplant,' they think of the old method; they think, 'Somebody's going to dig into my hip and drill for oil,'" Travers says. "That's not the way it works."
Hessen's donation was through the newer, less painful method. "I drove myself to the hospital and drove myself home," she says.
During her recuperation, Travers set three goals for herself. She has achieved two: performing at New York's Carnegie Hall, which Peter, Paul & Mary did in December, and going back on tour.
"My next goal is Italy."
These days she walks with a cane because of a knee problem and her blond hair is short, but she looks good and says she feels great.
Her illness taught her to be more patient and to "live in the now, which is not a bad thing."
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