Celebrating a Diploma and a Life

Graduate Shares the Moment With a Generous Stranger

Carlos Nieves had never met the 17-year-old Northwestern High School football player whose graduation he had come to witness.

But when he received an invitation, Nieves, 47, a meterological technician in El Paso, said he felt compelled to make the trip to see Ramon Hilliard walk across the stage last week and receive his diploma. After all, Nieves helped to make the moment possible two years ago when he donated the bone marrow that saved Hilliard's life.

"You hope to make a difference in someone's life," Nieves said at a community celebration for Hilliard. "I am here today knowing that I made a difference in this young man's life."

Although marrow donors rarely meet their recipients, Denae Hilliard, Hilliard's mother, worked with officials from the Be the Match Registry, part of the National Marrow Donor Program, to locate Nieves. Nieves accepted the invitation to attend the June 1 graduation at the University of Maryland's Comcast Center and to surprise Hilliard at a celebration at his church, Union Temple Baptist in Southeast Washington, the day before.

The church service attracted radio personalities, gospel singers, medical staff members from Children's National Medical Center, where Hilliard received the transplant, and representatives from the Be the Match Registry and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Nieves watched most of the program from a back room until he was introduced. When he walked into the sanctuary, the young football player and his mother broke into tears.

"I wanted Carlos to be at Ramon's graduation," Denae Hilliard said.

The celebrants knew what a miracle it had taken for Hilliard to have survived. He was found to have a fast-moving form of leukemia in November 2005, his freshman year, and needed a bone marrow transplant. When tests showed that none of his family members was a match, Denae Hilliard began a desperate attempt to save her child's life. She teamed with activist Rocky Twyman, who organized bone marrow drives, registering thousands of potential donors, particularly African Americans, in unlikely places.

The audience laughed when Twyman talked about hosting a bone marrow drive outside Verizon Center as George Mason University played in the NCAA men's basketball tournament for a trip to the Final Four. Denae Hilliard worked alongside members of the Northwestern High School football team, signing up potential donors along the sidewalk.

But help came from much farther away. Nieves, who works for a defense contractor and provides forecasts for U.S. Army helicopter pilots, had signed up to be part of the national bone marrow registry more than a decade ago when he was in the Air Force. As Hilliard lay critically ill and getting worse at Children's Hospital, his doctors decided to go with a marrow transplant from Nieves, even though he was just a 40 percent match. Nieves, a father of two sons, ages 21 and 15, also consented to go through with the procedure to extract his bone marrow for the transplant.

Hilliard had to give up football for a year and receive home-schooling while he recuperated his sophomore year, but he said he never gave up hope that he would get better and return to his school and his team. He did just that in his junior year. Now he plans to attend the University of Maryland in hopes of becoming a school counselor.

But as he walked into the church full of relatives and friends the day before his graduation, Hilliard said he couldn't help thinking that the service in his honor could easily have been his funeral.

"I don't know what death is like, but life is great," he said. "Graduating is a steppingstone to another part of my life, and I still have a long ways to go."