Steven was a 20 year old college sophomore at Troy State University and a member of the Sound of the South Band at TSU (trombone player).  Steven was a member of the honorary band fraternity Kappa Kappa Psi, Zeta Upsilon Chapter, and was initiated on April 13th, 2001.  He was a 2000 Honor graduate from Enterprise High School and was the recipient of the Coffee County Alumni Scholarship.  In August of 2001, at age 19, Steven was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (with Philadelphia Positive Chromosome) and began to receive treatment in Montgomery, Alabama.  He had been having headaches, leg pains, fatigue, night sweats, and had been looking pale.  Before his diagnosis Steven had been a regular blood donor and healthy.  After undergoing chemotherapy and further testing, doctors determined that Steven would require a bone marrow transplant in order to survive and have his leukemia in remission.  Since he had no siblings to try to find a match with we had to resort to finding an unrelated donor through the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).  A match was found and the transplant was planned for December of 2001 at University of Alabama, Birmingham.  In the week before a transplant takes place a patient, in this process, must undergo more chemo and radiation to a degree that wipes out their immune system to prepare for the new donor cells.  If the new marrow "takes" to the patient, using anti rejection drugs, the new marrow will cause the patients blood counts to rise to normal levels.  There are always complications in this process and many patients do not survive.  The toxic levels of chemo used can damage organs and leave the patient with many problems.  But without this treatment, Steven could only survive for a year or less.  Many blood and platelet transfusions would be necessary during all of this.  Steven was given about a 40% chance of surviving a bone marrow transplant.  We had the greatest hope for his survival and this would be the greatest challenge of his young life.  Steven had a tremendous desire to live and to "just get through this so I can go on with my life."