Rainbow of Heroes Celebrates Transplant Survivors

This year was the 25^th anniversary of a tradition at Duke Medical Center called the Rainbow of Heroes Walk. Held in late September every year, it is a celebration and remembrance of loved ones that have undergone a stem cell transplant at the Duke division of Pediatric Transplant and Cellular Therapy (PCTC). The ROH Walk honors all stem cell transplant patients.

The ROH Walk is an outdoor festival and picnic held at the track of Duke's Center for Living. The cornerstone of the annual event is a group photo behind a sign on a hill. Afterwards, participants take a walk on the track to represent their journey. Another traditional feature of the ROH Walk is a “wall of heroes” that displays photos of each year’s transplant patients (starting in 2005) and provides space for participants to put up their own posters.

Last year’s walk was almost rained out by Hurricane Helene, but this year a large crowd turned out on a beautiful day. Former pediatric patients, some a few months out of transplant and others now grown up, came with their families and supporters. The ROH Walk is also a fund-raiser for the family support program of the PCTC. Many donors and hospital staff were present to volunteer, wearing T-shirts that were tie-dyed into rainbows.

For the 25^th milestone year in 2025, extra activities were planned. In the evening after the walk, a dinner was held to celebrate the cord blood transplant survivors. This was partly sponsored by the National Cord Blood Network, an organization dedicated to training medical professionals on how to perform cord blood transplants. A pinning ceremony was held for survivors, and several participants took the microphone to tell their stories.

Another new aspect of this year’s ROH Walk was an effort to create greater publicity around the role of cord blood transplants and the existence of a community of long-term survivors. This year Matt Farrow, the recipient of the world’s first cord blood transplant in 1988, attended the event. Matt comes from North Carolina and was a patient of Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, but his transplant took place with Dr. Eliane Gluckman at the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris. It turned out that most of the cord blood transplant survivors at the Duke event had never heard of Matt. This made for some amazing and emotional encounters every time Matt had a conversation with another survivor.

The word “emotional” should be the theme of the entire ROH event… Wandering through this crowd and chatting with people, each patient or family member had a very moving story to tell. There was one gut-wrenching story after another. It was overwhelming at times, and definitely too much to capture in this blog. Anyone who is a supporter of cord blood transplants should come to next year’s ROH Walk!

In the photos below, everyone gave permission to have their image used for promotion of the Duke PCTC, but not to be copied and used elsewhere. Most of the images will display at high resolution if you click on them.

All of the people in these last two photos had a cord blood transplant 20 or more years ago.