EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) For almost three years, Sgt. Christian Sutton, known by his peers around Fort Bliss as the “Bone Marrow Guy,” has led Operation Ring the Bell, a bone marrow registry drive campaign within the U.S. Army, which has registered over 15,000 Army soldiers to the National Bone Marrow Registry. 

Before that, Sutton said the Army registered 800 to 1,000 people to the registry per year on average, and that Fort Bliss went over a decade without holding a bone marrow registry drive. 

“I just made up some crazy power moves and convinced the general of Fort Bliss to establish the first-ever Army-run program,” Sutton said. 

“As of right now, we are really close to the Army becoming the largest single source of bone marrow donors in the United States — not just from doing these drives, not just by helping out a little bit, but by genuinely going from (being) a small player in this fight against cancer, to one of the biggest in the game,” Sutton said. 

Sutton’s campaign is partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Salute to Life bone marrow donation program.

Sutton said his team goes to different battalions across Fort Bliss to help register soldiers during their motor pool formations. 

“I go out and brief them, give them kits with a cheek swab and a bit of paperwork, and (then) they’re on the national registry to potentially be asked to donate bone marrow to a cancer patient someday,” Sutton said. “I’m not taking anyone’s bone marrow. I’m a signaler. I just give them the information and let them register, and they choose for themselves whether or not they want to take that step and potentially save a life.” 

Sutton said his campaign has extended beyond just Fort Bliss to other Army posts, such as Fort Cavazos, Fort Carson, Fort Riley, and Fort Campbell.

“The Army represents the opportunity to double or triple the amount of people on the (national bone marrow registry) each year,” Sutton said. 

As to what has driven Sutton to take such an enormous initiative in expanding the Army’s contribution to the bone marrow registry, there are two key moments in his life which he said led him down this path. 

The first, Sutton said his mother died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a type of cancer – when he was just 4 years old, and was in need of a bone marrow donor. 

“If you get cancer and you go through chemotherapy, it destroys your bone marrow’s ability to reproduce itself healthily. The only way to treat that is by finding an almost identical genetic match that you can get bone marrow from, and that’s hard to do,” Sutton said. “Her donor could have been anywhere. They just never got the information, never got the brief. Her donor could have been in the Army,” Sutton said. 

The second was nearly three years ago when Sutton attended a punk rock concert, where he got the idea of holding a bone marrow registry drive at Fort Bliss.

“I hate punk rock. So I didn’t pay attention to the concert or the performers. But I noticed a table in the corner registering people as bone marrow donors, and the sign read “Punk rock saves lives,” Sutton said. 

Sutton said the image of a bone marrow registry occurring right next to a mosh pit left a lasting impression on him.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I can just do these anywhere.’ That contrast of chaos and real humanitarian effort, kind of stuck out,” Sutton said. 

Months later, Sutton made several phone calls that eventually led him to the DOD’s bone marrow program, and began his efforts to launch his campaign.

Sutton reflected on how far his campaign has come.  

“It’s still mind-blowing every time. Even if I spend weeks working towards getting a program established, (setting) that meeting, planning everything I say, (snd) when they say yes, I just don’t know how it happened. So it’s very, very humbling to be able to do something bigger than myself and somehow keep succeeding,” Sutton said. 

Sutton said his goal now is for his efforts to become routine in the Army. 

“I want it to be just normal every day, every week, part of the Army’s rhythm because that’s where lives get saved. If that information is put out so regularly to (the point) where there’s no cultural misconceptions about bone marrow donation, which causes people to not want to be registered or want to donate, then that will save lives in a drastically larger amount,” Sutton said.