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How did Thanks Mom start?

In the USA, Owen Wells, father of Kailee Wells, a young girl with aplastic anemia started stem cell donor drives (aka bone marrow drives) along with his wife Linda and daughter Taunya, originally as a Mother's Day Drive in Albuquerque, NM, Milwaukee, WI and Dallas, TX.  Through the Well’s strong encouragement of the NMDP (National Marrow Donor Program in the USA) to hold Mother's Day Annual Drive, the campaign grew and evolved  into The Thanks Mom Donor Drives with their terrific assistance to include 710 cities in 46 states bringing in almost 43,000 new donors.  Now the events are called “Marrow Drives”.
In USA, there have been various bone marrow registration campaigns including the “Be the Match” National Marrow Donor Program. US registrants have to pay $52 which is waived during the Thanks Mom campaign which has been happening since May 2003 to 2008.

In Canada potential “One Match” stem cell donors register for free. However, this type of campaign only happened once before in 2006. Sindi Hawkins of championed the “Thanks Mom” blood donation drive in May 2006.

 

Sindi lost her battle with leukemia and passed away September 21, 2010. This campaign has been resurrected in honor of her and all patients who lost their battles with bone marrow disease due to the lack of a suitable donor.