Annie's Army: How One Family Turned Grief Into a Bone Marrow Movement

Long before she got sick, Annie Eisner was already trying to save lives. At nine years old, she set up a cookie stand on the front lawn of her family's home in Livingston, New Jersey—a bedroom community about 24 miles west of New York City—and raised thousands of dollars to fight cancer, one cookie at a time.

Annie was diagnosed with leukemia on January 1st, 2020. Over the next three and a half years, she endured two separate battles with the disease and two bone marrow transplants. She passed away on August 25th, 2023. She was a freshman at Syracuse University when she left campus for the last time.

Her parents, Jodi and Andrew Eisner, did not step back. They stepped forward. Drawing on the fundraising Annie had started before her diagnosis and the bone marrow registry enrollment work she had taken up after it, they formalized their efforts into a foundation—and the northern New Jersey community around them moved with them.

At Annie's memorial on the Syracuse campus, Andrew issued a challenge to the students gathered there: get 4,400 people to swab for the bone marrow registry. The number carried meaning. Ernie Davis, the Syracuse running back who won the Heisman Trophy and wore number 44, died of leukemia at 23 without ever playing a down in the NFL. Annie had been sick for 44 months. The number fit.

Jodi thought he was crazy but as it turns out, he wasn't aiming high enough. What began in the fraternity and sorority community at Syracuse has since spread to college campuses across the country. The current tally: more than $31,000 raised, over 14,000 swabs collected, 289 matches identified, and 11 life-saving transplants completed.

Annie's cookies—the ones with the signature drop on the counter that gives them a crispy outside and a gooey, chocolaty center—remain a cornerstone of the foundation's fundraising. She is remembered on the wall of the bakery where they are still produced.

For Andrew, the mission is straightforward, even when the weight of it is not. Very few people are ever given a clear opportunity to save someone's life. Joining the bone marrow registry, he notes, is not a commitment to anything other than being willing to listen if you are ever called.