In 1980, Denny Buehler was a 24-year-old guy with three kids and leukemia.

He needed a bone marrow transplant, and in those days that was not available in Cincinnati

where he lived.

He had to go to Seattle with his sister who was the donor and his wife.

Well I remember my dad and I'm the only one of my siblings who does.

This is Denny's oldest daughter, Jenny Spring.

She was four when he went to Seattle.

I do remember knowing he was sick. I remember you know we lived

with his parents, our grandparents while he and my mom and Aunt Cynthia were in Seattle.

It was a long distance relationship, letters, sending tapes

back and forth. In those days, long distance phone calls were expensive.

I remember reading my first book, Go Dog Go, on to a cassette tape and sending it out to Seattle.

Back home, Danny's other sister, Mary Beth, organized a softball tournament to raise

money for all the expenses.

Flights to Seattle, places to stay.

And that softball tournament, that one-off event

that was part of one family's struggle,

became the germ of something that is now,

40 years later, starting to help a lot of people.

This is an arm and a leg, a show about the cost of health care. I'm Dan Weiser.

The bone marrow transplant worked, but Denny died of pneumonia a few months later.

February 14, 1981.

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