Donald Ray Vernon

January 23, 1979 - September 7, 2002
Born to Bobby Lee Vernon and Tammie Hull Vernon
Married to: Kristie Hoffman
One Son: Jadon Lee Vernon
Grandparents: Warren Ray Hull and Muriel Hull

My Story: On January 23, 1979, I gave birth to a healthy 9lb 8 ½ oz baby boy. He was just the
average little boy who started playing football at the age of 5 and continued playing until he
graduated from college. He was active in Boy Scouts, played t-ball, baseball, and wrestling. He was
an average 6ft 4 inches, 230 lbs young man by the time he graduated college. Before graduating
college, he got married and found a part-time job. After graduating, he started full time at
Salisbury Park & Recreation and worked with young children. He later met a young man from Salisbury,
Steve Nations and joined with him doing fundraisers for Athletes4Children, a non-profit organization
to raise money to help children with cancer. He had many plans and lots of promise for Athletes 4
Children. He wanted to help these sick children with cancer. He loved working with these children so
much, he and his wife decided to have a child, a healthy baby boy. When his baby was just 5 months
old, Donnie begin feeling tired all the time and he was slowly loosing his appetite; he just thought
with his full-time job, working with Athletes4Children and helping to raise his son that all this
was normal. Until, he went for his routine eye checkup. His eye doctor told him it looked like he
may have diabetes and that he should go see his regular physician. He came to eat dinner with me
after his eye appointment and to my amazement, he didn’t even eat 1 plate of food, not like Donnie
at all who usually ate 3 or 4 helpings. He laid on the bed, exhausted from the drive that day. I
begged him to go to the Emergency Department here and he said no, he’d just wait and see his
doctor the next morning. He did go the next morning, August 16, 2002, and the doctor did some blood
work and told Donnie to go on home and he would call him with his results. A couple of hours his
doctor did call, but told him they needed him to come back because for some reason their machines
were messed up. Donnie went back to his doctor and they ran the same blood test again and to the
doctor’s amazement, their machines were not wrong at all. Donnie’s white blood count was
284,000. He told him to pack a bag for overnight and go to the hospital in Rowan County (where he
lived). Once he got there, his doctor discussed all his results with him and explained that he had
some type of cancer and that he needed to go to Baptist Hospital so they could do further test and
treatment. Once he got to Baptist, they immediately began the testing and different procedures. They
tested his bone marrow then started chemotherapy. The doctors there told him what all he would have
to go through so he could get well enough and strong enough to go back home. They tried experimental
drugs and even did experimental procedures, but only after being at the hospital a couple of weeks,
he developed a yeast infection, then his fever went to 105, his breathing labored at 40 times per
minute and his body grew even weaker, he was put on the ventilator to help him breathe easier. We
still had hope that with all this new technology, that Donnie would pull through this; his
kidney’s shut down and his heart rate went down to hardly nothing. It was then that they told us
they had done all that was possible. So on September 7, 2002 he passed away. This is not an easy
story to tell and I hope that we can raise lots of money for further experiments that might save
someone else’s son, that they will not have to experience all that I did in those few short weeks.
Please, please do your part in helping make it possible to find a cure for this awful thing called
CANCER.....