Norwich launches site to support awareness campaign and marrow drives across the state

For Immediate Release
Feb. 10, 2011

Contact: Daphne Larkin
802-485-2886 or 595-3613(m)
dlarkin@norwich.edu

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NEWS RELEASE

NORTHFIELD, Vt. – Norwich University officials announced the launch of a website "In Charlie’s Corner," to support a campaign to raise awareness about the national bone marrow registry and Marrow Donor Drives across the state to be held on Thursday, Feb. 17.

Norwich developed the mission of raising awareness of the need for marrow donors when Sports Information Director Charlie Crosby, who has been battling leukemia for nine years, learned that although for him there is a 93% chance of a donor match on a registry of over nine million, there currently is no match.

The campaign is named after Crosby’s popular “Charlie’s Corner” list serve that updates everything going on in Norwich athletics.

“I decided the only way I can make sense of this thing is if I do whatever I can to expand the registry to increase the chance of a match for anyone who needs it,” Crosby said.

For Crosby, a bone marrow transplant has a 55% chance of working, and if it works then it cures him completely. There is still time to find him a match.

“If becoming the face of this means that one person out there gets the transplant he or she needs, then it will have meaning for me,” he said.

Inspired by Crosby’s story, three donor drives have been scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 17:

• 12-6 p.m. in Norwich University’s Plumley Armory, sponsored by DKMS
• 10-2 p.m. at the Flynn Theater in Burlington and
• 12-6 p.m. at the Paramount Theater in Rutland, both sponsored by the Marrow Donor Program at Rutland Regional Medical Center

Participants at marrow drives take the first step toward registration with a simple mouth swab.

To learn more about the issue and donor criteria, please visit www.incharliescorner.org.

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Norwich University is a diversified academic institution that educates traditional-age students and adults in a Corps of Cadets and as civilians. Norwich offers a broad selection of traditional and distance-learning programs culminating in Baccalaureate and Graduate Degrees. Norwich University was founded in 1819 by Captain Alden Partridge of the U.S. Army. Norwich University is the oldest private military college in the United States of America and the birthplace of our nation's Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). www.norwich.edu