Bone marrow donation results in a bond between unlikely friends

Sat, Aug 17th 2024 06:55 am

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…