Alana Dung « Kevin Walsh

The golf ball that started a revolution and the man who found it, Chris Pablo

We lost a very good friend who found a most interesting golf ball that took on a life of its own years ago. Chris Pablo died in Honolulu yesterday at the age of 59, from complications of cancer unrelated to his original leukemia diagnosis back in 1996. I’ve blogged about Chris before and I wrote a book about his life and mine called The Marrow in Me. I won’t pretend that everyone has been with me from the beginning, so I’ll include a little background.

Chris is the man who found an amazing golf ball that sparked my journey to becoming a bone marrow donor and author of The Marrow in Me.

Click here for Chris Pablo Tribute.

Chris found the golf ball in his basket years ago. It was old, discolored and had the words beat leukemia stamped on the side. Chris was diagnosed with leukemia just three weeks prior. Together and with the help of plenty of others in the Hawaii media, Chris and I told the Hawaii Community about his efforts to find an unrelated bone marrow donor. People couldn’t get enough of the golf ball hook. Chris’s story inspired other leukemia patients like two-year-old Alana Dung to come forward. The community responded and largely because of Chris and Alana, 30-thousand people registered as potential bone marrow donors. Eighty-six people went to transplant, including me; for a 16-year-old boy I’d never met. Chris found his lifesaving match from a legless man who saw the media coverage. Alana found her match in an international registry.

Alana Dung, inspired 30,000 people to register as potential donors

Chris had been sick for the last several months, but well enough a few months back to come to Boston to visit colleges with his youngest son Zack and family. He called me and told me we should get together. I suspected it might be our last chance to see each other. It was. I was so glad to see him one last time and my young daughters were thrilled to finally meet the man Daddy’s been writing about in The Marrow in Me for all these years. My picture of Chris and my girls sitting on the steps of the old Boston Police Station is one of my treasures and it’s included in the book with a note directly to Chris in the epilogue. Before the book went to print I emailed him the pdf file. “You kept me up all night and made me cry,” he said when he called the next day.

When Chris took a turn for the worse in October I rushed him one of the first printed copies of my book The Marrow in Me. I wanted him to hold it in his hands before his time. His wife Sandy says he did. That just meant the world to me and so did his friendship. Without that crazy golf ball I never would have become a bone marrow donor and certainly wouldn’t have written a book about it.

L to R, Amanda Walsh, Chris Pablo, Samantha Walsh. Boston, August 2009

Chris taught me so much about obligation, “the obligation of survivorship” as he called it. He taught me it’s okay and effective to allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of people. When a man tells you something like that with tears in his eyes, it’s profound and people listen. Chris’s courage and love for his family planted the seed in me to be the type of father and husband I hope I’ve become. I could go on and on, but you get the point. We lost a very good man and for that I am so sad.