Three central Ohio TV stations will present special programming today with regular newscast to jointly promote bone-marrow donation in honor of the late Chris Bradley.



Dubbed "Standing With Chris," the programming will air on WCMH-TV (Channel 4), WBNS-TV (Channel 10) and WSYX-TV (Channel 6).

Bradley, longtime chief meteorologist for Channel 10, died Wednesday at his Worthington home of acute myeloid leukemia at 53.

Station executives said phone banks will be open all day, beginning at 6 a.m., and stations will air segments of interviews with Bradley and others involved in bone-marrow donation throughout their morning, midday and evening newscasts.

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The phone bank will be manned by volunteers from Be the Match, which manages the national bone-marrow registry. Viewers can call in to ask questions about joining the registry.

During his 20-month ordeal, Bradley learned that a bone-marrow transplant was his only hope of survival. He was unable to undergo such a procedure, however, because his cancer never remained in remission long enough.

Still, in the final months of his life, Bradley championed the cause of bone-marrow donation — a fact not lost on Channel 4 news anchor Colleen Marshall.

The idea for "Standing With Chris" was Marshall's, said Ken Freedman, vice president and general manager at Channel 4. Marshall and Bradley had been friends for many years.

When Bradley announced last month that he was entering hospice care, Marshall approached Freedman with the idea of co-sponsoring a donor drive.

Freedman reached out to John Cardenas, vice president and general manager at Channel 10, and Tony D’Angelo, general manager at Channel 6.

“They were both receptive to that,” Freedman said. "We all try to use our airwaves to elevate our communities.”



Bradley, who learned about the plan before his death, fully supported the idea, said his husband, Jason Bradley-Krauss, who himself was deeply moved by the gesture.

“I made an audible gasp when we first heard about it,” Bradley-Krauss recalled. "It’s just so beautiful to me that the entire community can come together around this."

TV stations spend a lot of time competing against one another for ratings and advertising dollars, so the collaborative effort is unusual.

“It’s an incredible thing to see the three stations come together,” Cardenas said. “It just shows we can put our competitiveness to the side and really work toward what’s important — and in this case, what’s important is to honor Chris and how inspirational Chris was to the whole community.”

The idea thrilled Be The Match, said Erica Sevilla, a multicultural public-relations strategist with the organization who lives in Lewis Center. The TV effort, she said, represents a high-profile opportunity to raise awareness of the registration and donation processes.

"We're pretty excited to have three stations joining together to share this message," Sevilla said.

That message will explain how joining the donor registry simply requires filling out a profile online and rubbing a cotton ball on the inside of one's cheeks to obtain DNA to send back to Be the Match.

Bone-marrow donation, Sevilla said, doesn't always require the donor to be put under anesthesia. In fact, she said, donors in 75 percent of cases are asked to give only stem cells, which is similar to giving plasma. (Donors do have to take injections for five days leading up to the donation, and extraction could take up to eight hours.)

In the other 25 percent of cases, donors undergo a procedure to remove bone marrow from the hip. Pain can result for a few days, and donors need to rest after the procedure, but patients return home the same day, Sevilla said.

The procedure is one that Sean Patterson would gladly do again.

The Blacklick resident joined the registry in 2012 as part of a Be the Match drive at his office to benefit an ill co-worker. He was asked to donate bone marrow to a young girl in early 2014 and, later that year, stem cells to the same patient.

"The minor discomfort I went through is nothing compared to what someone fighting for their life day in and day out goes through," Patterson said. "It's truly about giving these individuals and their families more time."

About one in 430 people on the registry generally goes on to donate, Sevilla said.

The importance of growing the registry can't be overstated, she continued, as 70 percent of patients won't find a match within their families, so they must rely on the generosity of strangers.

The situation is even more dire for minorities, as ethnicity plays a role in a person's ability to find a match, Sevilla said.

For example, African-Americans — Patterson included — make up only 4 percent of the registry, giving a black patient a 23 percent chance of identifying a donor, compared with a 77 percent chance for white patients.

But "Standing With Chris" — along with Bradley's celebrity and willingness to share his story before his death — should help the cause.

"Chris was special to the community, and this is an area where the community can make a difference and give the gift of life to someone else," Sevilla said. "We hope thousands, if not tens of thousands, will join (the registry) in his name — and that will save lives.

During the last interview that Bradley gave, just a few days before he died, Marshall asked him how he felt about the idea of "Standing With Chris."

"I think we could get a lot of people on board (as donors)," he said — a response that became part of a Channel 4 promotional clip for the special programming.

Bradley-Krauss said that he and Bradley said throughout his illness that "if we were able to save one life (through his efforts to promote bone-marrow donation), that would absolutely be a blessing and part of his legacy."

"Chris said early on in his diagnosis, 'God is going to use me in this process,' and this was just one more iteration of that."

To join the bone-marrow donation registry in Bradley's honor, go to http://join.bethematch.org/bradleystrong.

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