Diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia when he was only 19 months old, Lachlan Tannery lost his battle against cancer eight days before Clemson photojournalist Ken Scar stumbled upon a stuffed animal in Memorial Stadium. This is the story of how Tannery and his namesake, Lachlan the Tiger, with the support of the Clemson Family, inspired a movement to save lives.
Family photos provided by Jason and Mary Tannery
In May 2015, I climbed to the top northeast corner of Memorial Stadium, section TK, to take some pictures for Clemson University’s web pages. As I huffed up flight after flight of stairs, I came across a small stuffed tiger lying on its side under one of the stadium’s 81,000 seats.
The Tigers had played their last home football game the previous November against archrival South Carolina, which meant the little toy had been lying up there alone in the elements all winter — and he looked it.
His orange coat was sun-bleached, his fur matted and torn, and he smelled like a damp towel. Still, he was kind of cute, so I propped him up and took a photo.
I brought the photo to our social media team, and we posted it later that day with a call to action: “Somebody left this little stuffed tiger to watch over Memorial Stadium for us during the offseason. Should we name him?”
None of us could have predicted that what happened next would not just change but save lives.
What’s in a Name?
Within minutes, responses started stacking up under the post.
Some suggested Clemmy. Others said Dabo, with a few Howards and Rockys sprinkled in. But those names were all smothered by a tidal wave of people demanding an altogether unexpected name: Lachlan.
“People came out of the woodwork,” says Robbie Fitzwater M ’17, Clemson’s social media director at the time. “Lachlan, Lachlan, Lachlan, Lachlan. There were a few curveballs, but then more: Lachlan, Lachlan, Lachlan. It was exciting to see the response, but we were like, ‘Wait, who is Lachlan?’”
“Who was Lachlan?” echoes Jason Tannery ’98, M ’07, who earned a Bachelor of Science in construction management and a Master of Real Estate Development from Clemson. “I don’t even really know how to answer that. He was just a special little boy.”
Jason and his wife, Mary, are the parents of three boys — Owen, the youngest, and identical twins Lachlan and Calhoun — all raised to love the Clemson Tigers from the day they were born, and that is not an exaggeration.
Mary says that after Lachlan and Calhoun were born in November 2012, she dressed them in Clemson Tiger gear before buckling them into their car seats for their first ride home. It just so happened that the Tigers were playing against South Carolina at Memorial Stadium that day, and Jason convinced Mary to swing by campus with their newborns.
“We drove by Memorial Stadium on our way home, no kidding,” says Mary. “They were born on Wednesday, Thanksgiving was Thursday, and the fall game was Saturday. Jason even asked if going in with our new babies and watching the game for a while would be OK.”
“It was not OK,” laughs Jason.
The two boys thrived together in their
first months. In addition to the Tigers, Lachlan loved tractors, garbage trucks, trains, veggie sticks and Play-Doh. But in the spring of 2014, he started to fall behind his brother and show signs that something just wasn’t right.
“It’s all kind of a blur now,” says Mary. “We found out Lachlan had leukemia — and a very rare type of leukemia — when he was 19 months old. The only type of treatment was a bone marrow transplant because it was so rare there were no known treatments for it.”
Lachlan was diagnosed with juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia, found in about 70 children per year in the United States, which literally made him one in a million.
His treatment included extended visits to the hospital that often lasted more than 100 days. Mary started writing a blog to cope with the stress during these times, and her candid descriptions of Lachlan’s fight against his merciless foe galvanized the Clemson community.
Lachlan lost his battle in May 2015, eight days before the little stuffed tiger was found in the stands.
When Mary went to Clemson’s Facebook page and voted to name the tiger “Lachlan,” the community’s collective grief swelled and created a social media storm.
Going Viral
The name became official, and every week or so for the next year, the Clemson social media team would post photos of Lachlan the Tiger exploring different locations on campus. The campaign became so successful that it was featured in USA Today and ESPN during Clemson Football’s run toward a second national championship in 2016.
For a while, it seemed everybody at Clemson knew who Lachlan the Tiger was.
“It was one of those lightning-in-a-bottle moments you can’t create if you tried,” says Fitzwater. “It was authentic, emotional and unique, and that combination is one of the most powerful things in social media because you can’t fake that.”
However, that was many years ago. Media cycles are short, college students graduate, and trends come and go. Eventually, the little stuffed tiger faded back into anonymity.
But that is not the end of this story.
Fast forward to today: Out of the spotlight, Lachlan’s spirit has been busy making miracles.
Lachlan’s Hope
After Lachlan passed, a foundation was created in his honor, Lachlan’s Hope, which gives aid to children receiving bone marrow transplants and works to sign people up for the national bone marrow registry, Be the Match.
The disease that took Lachlan’s life, JMML, is among the life-threatening blood cancers, including leukemia and lymphoma, that can be treated with a stem cell or bone marrow transplant.
Max Allen, Clemson University senior vice president and chief of staff, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in July 2022 and received a stem cell transplant in February 2023.
“Myeloma is a blood cancer that’s tied in with the bone marrow and plasma, whereas leukemia wreaks havoc in all different parts of the body — but they’re all blood cancers, and they all affect African Americans to a much greater degree,” says Allen, whose father-in-law succumbed to complications from the exact same disease a year before he was diagnosed with it.
“So, it’s important for people to consider signing up for the registry,” Allen adds. “There’s no division when it comes to blood. An African American can match with a Caucasian and vice versa, same with organ donors. It just goes to show we’re all the same inside.”
The Lachlan the Tiger social media campaign brought national exposure to Lachlan’s Hope and inspired Clemson students, faculty, staff and community members to sign up for Be the Match in droves. Getting on the registry is easy — -just two quick cotton swabs inside your cheeks.
“We started our Be the Match program with the band here at Clemson a year before the whole Lachlan the Tiger thing happened, and we had about 40 people sign up,” says Mark Spede HA ’23, Clemson professor of music and director of bands. “The year that Mary came and spoke about Lachlan, there wasn’t a dry eye on the field. We had 200 sign up right then — almost the entire band. It was a very powerful moment. Lachlan’s story kicked our efforts to another level.”
Every year since, Tiger Band members have signed up for Be the Match in multitudes.
“At this point in time, at least nine band members have matched and donated bone marrow that I know about, and I probably don’t know about them all,” says Spede.
One of those band members was Kendall Stayanoff, who matched with David Green, a 66-year-old grandfather of six from Mobile, Alabama.
“To have the opportunity to save someone’s life and have such an impact is incredible,” says Stayanoff. “We take our health for granted. Life is a gift in itself, and to be able to potentially give that to someone is so profound.”
Stayanoff says Green is now a part of her family and vice versa.
“The first time we met, it was like we’ve known each other forever,” Stayanoff says. “He and his wife, Vicki, are just incredible people. I love them so much. I got to see him this past June, and he told me he is in complete remission.”
Stayanoff’s experience with Green affected her so deeply that she became an oncology nurse. Today, she works with cancer patients in the oncology department of Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital.
“I was in nursing school by the time I donated, and at that point, I hadn’t decided where I would land when I graduated,” she says. “It was like God was speaking to me, truly. I feel that every day when I’m at work. I feel like it really is the best thing I might ever do with my life.”
Clemson staff members, faculty members and community members have also matched and donated bone marrow. Some matches happen right away; others take years.
Lacey Land, a lifelong Tiger fan and member of the Lachlan’s Hope board of directors, matched seven years after she donated with a financial advisor in Washington, Indiana, named Tara Parsons, who had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.
“To me, it’s what God’s done through Lachlan,” says Land. “It’s about growing the registry and helping somebody when it’s their only chance. It’s a simple process — you swab and send it in. You may never hear anything, but you could be the one. I’m blessed to be able to say I was a one.”
The One
Be the Match keeps donors anonymous for at least one year, so Parsons could only imagine what kind of person Land was as she underwent treatment.
“All I knew was she was 40 years old and a few other basic bits of information,” says Parsons, who, together with her husband, Corey, has a family of seven children ages 4 to 15. “I wanted to pray over her, and I wanted my family and community to pray over her, but when you pray for somebody, ‘donor’ doesn’t sound right, so I had to give her a name.”
A friend of Parsons sent her a Bible quote from the Book of Esther during this time. It described how Queen Esther was elevated to her position for “such a time as this.”
“That could not describe my donor more perfectly,” says Parsons. “For such a time as this, God created Lacey to be my donor, so she was known to us as Esther for an entire year.”
Parsons received Land’s bone marrow at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in 2021. Three years later, her cancer is in remission.
After her treatment, Parsons traveled to South Carolina to meet Land and the Tannerys. A video shows Land and Parsons meeting on a street in Walhalla and falling into a long embrace. It was the same immediate connection when she met Mary and Jason.
Parsons recalls Mary wrapping her into a tight hug and speaking into her ear: “This has come full circle for me now. Every second of the day, I’ve questioned, ‘Why did my little boy have to die?’ It’s so you can live.”
“It was the most humbling moment of my life,” Parsons says.
And it wasn’t just Land and Tannery who embraced her, she recalls, but their entire Clemson Family.
“I get chills when I think about how many Clemson people have matched,” says Parsons. “The Clemson community that surrounds Lachlan’s family is so amazing. They’ve embraced me and my family like we’re their own. I am forever grateful.”
“His brief time on this Earth has helped so many people. It is so hard to be sad. And ultimately, we believe, so it’s just a minute and we’ll get to see him again. So, I’m going to continue to smile through it.”
—Mary Tannery
Small Sacrifices
There is no shortage of cancer patients like Parsons out there in the world, hoping against hope for a match.
“Going through all these different treatments and hospitals the last couple of years, I’ve seen there’s a lot of need out there,” says Clemson’s Allen. “College-aged persons are the ideal candidates to donate bone marrow, so I would tell our students: If you’re able and willing, get on the registry. It can make all the difference to someone. We’re all about the Clemson Family here, but family comes in different shapes, forms and sizes. Lachlan has shown us what a beautiful, extended family we really are.”
Mary says it’s impossible to know precisely how many lives have been directly affected by Lachlan’s story, but she does know many thousands of people have signed up for Be the Match in his name.
“This is what keeps him with us,” she says. “His brief time on this Earth has helped so many people. It is so hard to be sad. And ultimately, we believe, so it’s just a minute and we’ll get to see him again. So, I’m going to continue to smile through it.”
“Make the sacrifice for others,” says Jason. “I mean, that’s the biggest thing Lachlan taught us. Getting on the registry is not a big sacrifice, either, compared to what he gave.”
There’s nothing stronger than a parent’s love for his or her child, but there may be something equal to it. One of Clemson’s core values is selfless service to others. Lachlan Tannery died so that others may live.
There is no greater love than that.
Ken Scar is a cancer survivor and senior writer in the Division of Marketing and Communications.
