Bone marrow donation results in a bond between unlikely friends

Story and Photo by Alice Gerard

Senior Contributing Writer

In February, Kim Schopp Kalman traveled to Kentucky to visit her bone marrow recipient, Stu Fugate.

“I didn’t want a party here, so I flew myself to Kentucky,” Kalman said. “It was the most beautiful thing. I went and celebrated my 50th birthday with Stu in Kentucky. We surprised him. Stu’s son, Justin, helped coordinate all of that. It was super amazing. And now, they’re Buffalo Bills fans!”

“Go Bills,” Stu Fugate added.

Kim said that, if it weren’t for the bone marrow donation, it would have been unlikely that she and Fugate would have met. “We would probably have never known each other. Why would we? You’re from southeastern Kentucky. It’s very different. I do a lot on Grand Island. My dad’s a three-time survivor. I lost four best friends to cancer.”

Kalman did, however, have that Kentucky connection that Fugate said he was hoping she would have. Her grandparents were from Kentucky. As a child, however, Kalman visited Kentucky just once with her family.

“Reg and I and my mother went down there once to meet my grandmother and my aunt. That was a great thing,” said Kalman’s mother, Jeri Schopp. “That was in Louisa. That was wonderful.”

Kentucky was a big part of Schopp’s life when she was a child. She visited Louisa, Kentucky, with her three younger siblings every year. Louisa, Kentucky, is in southeastern Kentucky, about an hour and a half’s drive away from Beulah, Kentucky, where Fugate lives and a four-hour drive from Zenia, Ohio, where Schopp grew up.

“My uncle lived in Prestonsburg. Oh, Alice, it used to be hills up and down. I used to get carsick every time. It’s all thruway now. There’s no more up and down. It’s an easy ride now,” Schopp recalled.

“I was born in Springfield, Ohio, but lived in a town called Brookville, Ohio, then moved to Zenia, which is where I grew up,” Schopp said. “It’s between Dayton and Cincinnati. So much of Zenia is different now because a tornado in 1974 tore it all down. You go back, and schools are gone. The church is gone. Stores are gone. So, it’s all different. But it’s grown. There’s not a lot of industry there. There are places around it that have industry. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is not far. That’s where a lot of people go to work. But Zenia? I liked it.”

Schopp said she also liked her visits to Louisa, where she and her three younger siblings spent several weeks with their grandmother, whom they called their “Memaw Minnie,” and their Aunt Virginia.

“She was the best. Kind, great cook, a Godly woman. My grandfather died when I was 2, so I don’t really remember him,” Schopp said.

“My Memaw was just the best. Always a laugh. Just little things. Like when I had a loose tooth. My front tooth was loose. She took a string and tied it to a doorknob and slammed the door. Little stories like that. Things grandmas do, I guess. She just did it. She didn’t give a warning. She just tied it. I thought she was going to give a little yank, but no. BOOM! It came out.”

Schopp said her grandmother lived in a “big old house, up on a hill. It was a little hill, but it was a hill. And it had mice. She said to me one time that she was going to gather them up and cook them.

“She didn’t have money. There was no money, but there was always food. Somehow, we always had a lot to eat. She never complained, and she had health issues. But she never complained. Neither did my Aunt Ginny. They were just the best. It was just a beautiful part of the country. Winters could be harsh, but it can be harsh here. I think the mountains kind of protect you from part of that air. It’s beautiful. I think the winters are a little milder than they are up here.”

Schopp said her grandmother took the children to church several times a week: on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and Friday night. “Whether we wanted to or not, we went. When we were at Memaw’s, that’s what we did.” At church, Schopp said, her aunt was the pianist.

By the time Kalman visited Kentucky in February, time had altered the landscape.

“It used to be just coal mining,” Schopp said. “There’s a lot of tourism now, too, because people appreciate the beauty of that area. There’s a lot of people coming to see it, which is great.”

Kalman said she was excited to visit Fugate.

“My focus is on people, and I think Stu is the same way, and I think it’s super cool that we’ve had these conversations with one another,” she said. “I had a friend die of exactly what Stu had. I’ve had another friend who’s been sick with it. And I’ve had three friends I’ve lost, including Mary Dunbar, from cancer. My dad is a three-time survivor. I think it’s very important, in general, that my story with Stu is I want people to realize how easy it is to do what I did. I did resonate that with the story with you. I didn’t know Stu at that point, and I think Stu is like … when I left Kentucky, Stu sent me back to Grand Island with a $500 check for Relay For Life. I think he realizes the education and importance of getting people to realize what’s involved in donating. Getting on the list is easy, but are you going to say yes? It’s a process, but I don’t think people realize how easy it really can be when you do become a match to somebody.”

Fugate said he was just as excited to come to Grand Island in June to visit Kalman and her family.

“Kim is a very special person,” he said. “I got a little emotional talking to the owner of the bed and breakfast where I stayed. I told her my story, and I got a little teary eyed and so did she. It’s a great story and, without people like Kim, people like me don’t get that second chance. Be the Match or the new name of Be the Match. It just takes a very, very special person to do this.”

Kalman said Fugate is a special person, as well: “Nobody knew what was going on, but Stu paid for the breakfast (of an older man wearing a Korean War hat at Eggsquisite Eats) without anybody knowing but the waitress, without even the guy knowing. You (Fugate) are amazing like that. Stu told me that, even during his treatment in Houston, he would help the homeless in Hazard, Kentucky, where he’s from. He sent his wife with gift cards for these homeless people so (people) wouldn’t know he was actually having the treatment. I was like, ‘All right, this is the right dude for me. I’m so happy I matched him.’ I do the same thing. I think I do the same thing. At least, I try to do the same thing as Stu, but I think it was meant from God that we met. We’re very similar in that regard.”

For Fugate, the trip north meant checking three items off his bucket list: visiting Gettysburg, visiting Kalman and meeting her family and friends, and seeing Niagara Falls.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Fugate said of his first visit to Niagara Falls. “The next time we’re back, we’ll go visit it from the other side, the Canadian side, or on that extended bridge that you can walk across so you get more of the horseshoe.”

Fugate and Kalman both said they never had any doubts that they wanted to meet and form this relationship that Kalman described as being like “brother and sister. His eye color changed to mine and his blood type changed to mine.”

She said, however, her bone marrow donation might have never occurred because of the amount of time that elapsed between her getting on the list and her actual donation.

“I didn’t get the call until October, and I’d been on the list since 2009,” Kalman said. “But I do have to say, and it’s really, really important to say they called me, and I didn’t have the same phone number. They couldn’t get hold of me. They called my husband. His number stayed the same, and my husband gave them my new number. So, he could take credit for this. I’ve been on it for so long. It’s just like you need to update your information if you’re on that list. Cell phone numbers change.”

“Keep everything updated,” Fugate said. “That is important because, if Scott hadn’t answered his phone. …”

“This wouldn’t have happened. Yeah, I think it’s very important,” Kalman said.

Next time: More about Fugate’s experience as a bone marrow recipient at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, his hopes for his future, and more.