HIGHLAND PARK, Ill., Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Peter, Paul and Mary singer Mary Travers met her Michigan bone marrow donor, a year after the transplant that saved her from dying of leukemia.
"This is a very special woman to whom I owe everything," Travers said at a Sunday concert in Highland Park, Ill.
Travers received the transplant from Mary Hessen, 46, through The National Marrow Donor Program, which requires recipients and donors remain anonymous for one year, USA Today reported.
Hessen is an insurance agent in Lake Orion, Mich., who signed up with the registry to help a boy at her church. Although she wasn't a match for him, she learned she could donate to someone else.
The two women each have two daughters. When Travers heard that, she thought, "This was meant to be," she said.
A longtime Democrat, Travers, 69, joked about the preferred politics for the donor. "So I get on the phone with Mary and I say, 'Oh, we had this joke.' And there's this pause, and she says, 'But I am a Republican.' It has added a certain kind of vigor to my bones, but it hasn't changed my throat -- or my politics," Travers said.
