How to Save a Life: Project Life Movement Turns 35
May 27, 2026
On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, grateful tears flowed as Scott Smith danced with his daughter, Carli, at her wedding in February.
He’d spent a grueling few years battling life-threatening bone marrow cancer, but on this day, looked happy, healthy and very much alive.
For that he and his family thank “our angel,” Alice Odum ’26, whose stem cell donation saved his life.
A 15-year-old girl with leukemia hasn’t met Ajay Watson ’26 yet, but his bone marrow recently saved her life.
Odum and Watson are among thousands of Davidson College students who’ve participated in Project Life Movement (PLM) donor drives on campus.
Their donations represent decades of symmetry. Thirty-five years ago, Davidson students whose lives had been saved by stem cell/marrow transplants started a movement to save others.
Those efforts grew and spread, and today, the Charlotte-based PLM holds donor drives at about 60 colleges and universities a year.
“When people show up for the drive and get on the registry, my heart is warmed,” says John Ramey ’95, a PLM co-founder who as a Davidson student overcame aplastic anemia after a transplant. “When someone is a match and agrees to donate, my heart swells and I get moved almost to tears.”
Grateful Students Give Back
The first Davidson donor drive happened in 1991.
Ramey, co-founder David Lindsay ’93 and Steve Keller ’94, all students who needed transplants as teenagers, felt passionately about helping others live.
They worked with staff and faculty members, including then-President John Kuykendall, to start a non-profit called Project Life. American Red Cross workers came to campus to conduct blood tests during the drives.
Lindsay continued running the non-profit, now named Project Life Movement, after college. It expanded in scope with help from prominent Charlotte advertising agency owner Steve Luquire, whose wife, Vicki, died from leukemia in 2014. Other supporters include former Carolina Panther Luke Kuechly, a member of this year’s NFL Hall of Fame class, who serves as its ambassador.
(Lindsay left PLM in 2018 to start a non-profit focused on lifting communities in need.)
Ann Henegar, PLM’s executive director, leads a staff of four. They work with Gift of Life Marrow Registry, which handles the clinical side of donations.
While records from earlier days aren’t available, Henegar says that since PLM began its partnership with Gift of Life in 2019, Davidson’s 117 donor drives have added 1,276 names to the national registry.
“Your school is small but mighty in those numbers,” Henegar says. “Davidson students and alumni have left a lasting legacy and footprint. Davidson set the model.”
Elise Boyse ’27, a Hodgkin lymphoma survivor, serves as the college’s PLM chapter president.
As a young person, you never think you’re going to be in a situation where you could die. I know the desperation of not knowing what’s going to happen; it made a huge difference when I had a treatment plan. When students are a match, and able to help people find the path forward, it’s incredibly rewarding.
Chapter President, Project Life Movement at Davidson College
Lifetime Connection
People need stem cell/marrow transplants because of disease or damage caused by blood cancer that treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation can’t cure.
Family members offer the most promising possibility for donations, but even then, there’s only a 20 % chance of a match. The optimal donor candidate is between 18-35, making healthy college students a rich source of potential matches.
In the 1990s, getting on the registry required a blood test, which sometimes scared off needle-averse students. Today, testing requires a simple cheek swab.
Steve Ball ’92 had the blood test during his senior year at Davidson. That summer, he got a call that his marrow was a match for a six-month old baby with a rare genetic disease in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The baby, Grant Robinson, survived and Ball kept in touch with his parents through letters, phone calls and VHS tapes they’d send as he grew. They met in person when he turned 10.
Robinson served in the U.S. Army and when he got married, invited Ball and his wife, Lauren Follmer Ball ’92, to be in the wedding. Like the Balls, the Robinsons now have three children.
Ball serves on the PLM board.
“Grant was the first member of his family to survive the disease,” Ball says. “I’ll never forget going to his wedding, and so many people came up to us in tears, thanking me for saving his life. There was a lot of hugging.
“I’m so glad I was able to do that.”
Steve Ball ’92 saved a baby’s life through a marrow donation and years later, attended his wedding.
Decades of Donors
Many Davidson students have followed. The college’s PLM chapter partners with the non-profit to recruit donors.
Odum, a biology major and Hispanic studies minor from Charlotte, got her cheek swabbed during her freshman year. She learned the next year that she was a match, and flew to Boca Raton, Florida, to donate stem cells.
Donations come in several forms and depend on the patient’s needs. Odum spent about four hours undergoing a blood transfusion. She had blood drawn from one arm, and a machine removed the stem cells. Her blood was then transfused back through her other arm.
“It was pretty painless,” she says. “Since then, I’ve talked to so many friends, family members and people I meet about how important it is to get tested. And some of them have been matches.”
After a year, donors and recipients have the chance to meet if both agree.
Odum met Smith, and his wife, Shari, over a FaceTime call.
“I’m so grateful that I was able to do this,” Odum says. “Scott and his family have had such an impact on me. I will carry this experience with me for the rest of my life.”
Scott Smith, 63, whose struggles hospitalized him for many weeks, is now back to his highway construction job, golfing, fishing “and doing amazingly well.”
He and his wife love to hear from Odum and are excited to see what her future holds.
“Alice is such a wonderful young lady. We got to meet her mom and dad, too. They’re a wonderful family,” Shari Smith says. “We could not have asked for a better donor. I just love her.”
Watson, a Questbridge Scholar and a Gates Scholar from Michigan, is a computer science major at Davidson. He got a call that he was a match during the fall semester. In February, he flew to Washington, D.C., for the procedure. He underwent anesthesia and had marrow removed from his hips to transplant to the teenager with leukemia.
The experience has helped shape his plans to pursue a nursing career. He looks forward to meeting the recipient someday.
It’s something really special to know that you can save someone’s life by doing this. You get that warm feeling and get choked up inside. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Ramey, now a PLM board member, is heartened that the mission he helped start continues to thrive at Davidson.
“Such kindness and generosity,” he says. “The person in need of a transplant is staring down what could be the end of their life and someone who does not know them is throwing them a lifeline.”
By The Numbers
While records from earlier days aren’t available, PLM says that since 2019,
-
more than
57,000+people have been swabbed through outreach on
-
60
college campuses.
-
Of those, nearly
2,342have been matches, and
-
217
have resulted in transplants.
-
Davidson’s
117donor drives have added
-
1,276
names to the national bone marrow registry.
-
Of those,
98have resulted in matches of students who agreed to take the next step if needed.
-
11
students have been donors for transplants.
This article was originally published in the Spring/Summer 2026 print issue of the Davidson Journal Magazine; for more, please see the Davidson Journal section of our website.
