That call was a defining moment in the campaign to save my life. Shortly after I was diagnosed with leukemia back in June 1991 and told I would need a bone marrow transplant to survive, I learned that I was one of the 70 percent of patients who didn’t have a family member who was a match as a donor. To make matters worse, there was no suitable unrelated donor in the registry either.

So my family and friends embarked on a grassroots effort to organize drives in the community to find a match. When that call came in from John Crandall, we were running our campaign from the dining room table in my parents’ New Jersey home. There were papers everywhere. Volunteers sat in the den, the dining room, the living room and the kitchen — meeting, organizing, coordinating and planning. The dining room table was our command center.

Nervously, my parents and I drove the few miles from West Orange to Roseland. The building was enormous. We found the leasing office and asked for Mr. Crandall. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said, “let me show you the space.” He took us up to the third floor, unlocked the door and turned on the lights. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Two thousand square feet of office space lay before us — fully furnished with desks, chairs, a phone system and a conference room. “Would this meet your needs?” he asked. We smiled.

He took us back downstairs to the leasing office and asked us to sit down. “I have a lease agreement here,” he said as he took the document out of a manila folder on his desk. “Now I have to warn you, it isn’t cheap.”
He handed us the document. With trepidation we looked down and read the terms: “$1 per year; payable in advance.” We looked up at Mr. Crandall. “Well, you know we have to charge something for this!”

We couldn’t thank him enough! As we left the office, my father put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a dollar bill. He looked over at Mr. Crandall and asked, “Can I pay the rent now?”

Over the course of four years, “Friends of Jay” operated out of that donated office space. We organized 225 drives and registered 60,000 donors. Dozens of volunteers worked tirelessly in that office. The rest is history. None of this would have been possible without the generosity of Cali Realty (now Mack-Cali Realty) and Mr. John Crandall.

Yesterday, 19 years from that historic meeting, I had lunch with Mr. Crandall. I wanted to catch him up on all the good things that Gift of Life has been doing since “Friends of Jay” found my match and I had my transplant. That’s when Mr. Crandall — John — shared words that will be with me for the rest of my life. “Jay, I have to tell you, what your campaign did for me was just as significant as what Cali Realty did for you. It gave me the opportunity to do something good, something very meaningful for people in need. It was a defining moment in my life, and I am forever grateful.”

For both of us, my diagnosis with leukemia had an impact that will be with us a lifetime. And what became of that dollar bill? Well, John returned it to me at our annual gala back in 2005. It was the best investment I ever made!