Thornton resident Neale Boyle, a youth basketball coach at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in West Chester, finally met the man who saved his life with a bone marrow transplant three years ago, writes Jeff Chirico for 6ABC.

Boyle was diagnosed with a reoccurrence of acute myeloid leukemia in 2016 and needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. However, despite community fundraisers and donor drives, no match was found.

Luckily for Boyle, Carol Barnes, a professor at Mississippi College, was offering her students extra credit if they joined the bone marrow registry.

Trey Freeman signed up and discovered he was the perfect match for a patient. Within three months, he had bone marrow removed from his pelvic bone.

Freeman did not know the name of the patient until January, when a surprise meeting with Boyle was arranged by his friends. Then last week, the two men finally met at a gathering at the Concord Country Club.

“He’s my hero,” Boyle said of Freeman. “The sacrifice he made for me gave my life back.”

Read more about the emotional meeting from 6ABC here.

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