By all accounts, Brad Martin was one tough dude.

“He was tiny, but mighty,” Martin’s wife Trish said Friday in recalling the certain prowess he possessed despite never weighing more than 150 pounds.

Her husband didn’t fight in the ring or play football. Instead he waged valiant competition against multiple major health issues for nearly 20 years until losing the final battle on Aug. 14, after suffering from leukemia, lung cancer and finally a stroke, among other ailments.

Those who knew Brad Martin, who was 60, will agree that what his physical presence lacked in pounds, he made up with tons of determination, enthusiasm and resilience.

A primary-care physician once described the lifelong Surry County resident as tough as a pine knot. “He had more than nine lives, one of his neurologists said — and he was a fighter,” Trish Martin added of behavior that also earned Brad a reputation as “country strong.”

“He just had a strong will to live,” she said of the man to whom she was married for 34 years, an anniversary they celebrated in April.

Yet along with all his inner strength, Brad’s existence in later years was made possible by another important resource: numerous blood transfusions from supplies collected by the American Red Cross.

Memorial drive planned

To highlight that gift of life and the difference it made for Brad Martin — and the ongoing need by others — a blood drive in his memory will be held Saturday at First United Methodist Church in Pilot Mountain from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The church is located at 210 Marion St.

Before Brad’s death, the American Red Cross had been working with his wife to plan a blood drive in his honor. Tying a real person to the need for donations often prompts more people to roll up their sleeves.

“We have now re-branded the drive in memory of him,” Lynn Wilkes of the Greater Carolinas Blood Services Region that covers Surry, said of next Saturday’s event.

“It means everything,” Trish Martin said of the importance of the blood drive, given Brad’s experiences and raising awareness about the need for donations.

Sadly, unless cancer or other life-threatening conditions requiring blood strike someone they know, that need does not register with most people — “until you put a cause to a face, it doesn’t hit home,” she lamented.

If everyone realized how valuable the act of giving blood was for individual families, and how easy that is to do, more donors would come forward, Trish believes.

“It might take a little time out of your day,” she said of the only downside involved.

Prospective donors are urged to make appointments for the Brad Martin drive, either online at RedCrossBlood.org or by calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767).

Trish Martin says that is important in allowing drive organizers to have sufficient personnel on hand to accommodate expected donors, mentioning that people had to be turned away for another drive held for him in 2004.

Blood made difference

The important of such donations for Brad was clearly evident in the last years of his life.

“Since 2018 until when he passed, he had received 45 units of blood — and that’s just unheard of,” his wife said, which does not include others before then. Brad was suffering from anemia in 2018, which required transfusions.

The couple had two sons and two young grandchildren at the time of his death. “Had it not been for blood donations, he would not have seen his grandchildren,” Trish Martin said of the timing involved and how those supplies prolonged her husband’s life.

However, his history with various medical crises goes way back beyond that.

Brad, the son of the late George and Sandra Martin, who grew up in the Slate Mountain/Woodville community and worked in tobacco as a youth, graduated from East Surry High School in 1978.

He held different jobs, the longest-tenured with Duke Energy, 17 years.

Brad Martin’s world changed in July 2003 when he was diagnosed with leukemia, a type of cancer, at age 42. This led to a lengthy international search through a bone-marrow registry for a match to allow either a marrow or blood stem cell transplant to combat the disease affecting the blood and marrow.

After no match initially surfaced among Martin’s family members, a perfect one eventually was found with a man in Germany who was 12 years younger.

Martin underwent a transplant in July 2004 at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, with his treatment regimen also requiring chemotherapy.

He was in remission until 2011, with a laundry list of medical maladies putting him on a steady decline in subsequent years.

In addition to lung cancer, Brad contracted another form of blood cancer along the way and also suffered from major vascular disease. He further endured an above-knee amputation in August 2019 and a below-knee amputation this past March.

As if all that were not enough, Brad was diagnosed with lung cancer in June, and surgery to address the suspected malignancies was deemed the best solution — although his weakened state was an issue.

“He wanted the surgery,” Trish Martin said, exhibiting his by-then-customary fortitude.

“He came through the surgery beautifully,” she related. “And so he amazed his doctors again.”

Lasting legacy

In explaining how the “country strong” label came to be associated with Brad, Trish Martin told of sitting in a waiting room during one of her husband’s medical procedures in March, when visitation was limited to a single person per patient because of COVID-19.

Another woman was in the room at the time, and the two struck up a conversation, leading to a declaration about Brad by that individual.

“I showed her a picture of him and she said, ‘Oh my God, he’s country strong,’” Trish said of the perseverance exhibited by Brad. It seems to reflect the hard work many rural people face in their lives which in turn bolsters one’s character.

“Just look at his eyes,” the woman in the waiting room said.

“He had a glow about him,” Trish agrees.

Not long after the recent lung cancer operation came Brad Martin’s final struggle.

“Ten days after the surgery he suffered a stroke and six days later he passed away,” said Trish, explaining that a chemotherapy drug her husband had taken years ago caused hardening of the arteries, which can lead to a stroke.

However, she approaches the sequence of events philosophically.

“He just had so many things going on — and it was just his time.”

Trish Martin is comforted by the example of faith and courage set by her late husband during his many crises.

“So many people say he has been an inspiration to them,” she advised.

“He always had a smile for people and was asking how they were,” Trish said of his tendency to focus on others rather than his own health issues, while never complaining.

“He loved people and he had a heart of gold.”

That spirit of caring for others is living on despite the local man’s recent death, due to Brad’s decision to donate his body to Wake Forest School of Medicine.

“Hopefully, his body is going to teach some incoming medical student,” Trish says, “and they are going to learn so much from him.”