This is a story about consistency. And dependability. And service to one’s community.

It’s a story about Marie Bacon, whose time as a volunteer for the American Red Cross started more than 20 years ago when she was a science teacher and Beta Club advisor at Bryan County High School.

Her four-year tenure as the Beta Club’s faculty advisor ended with her retirement from teaching in 2005, and when Bacon told an American Red Cross representative she couldn’t organize the next club’s next drive because she was retiring, Bacon got an unexpected offer.

“I was asked if I would do one out in the community instead,” she said. “I thought about it and said I wouldn’t mind. I thought one blood drive, I can do that.”

One blood drive became two. Two blood drives a year became three blood drives a year, then six a year.

To use a cliché – the rest is history. Bacon is stepping down as the volunteer in charge of setting up the drives.

She and her husband Perry have a great grandchild they want to spend time with, and, as she put it, “it’s time.”

She’ll be missed, according to American Red Cross representative Cindi Bauer. A lot.

““Marie has been the heart and soul of the Pembroke Community blood program for 17 years,” Bauer said in an email, then listed just how much of an impact Bacon has had. “Her and her teams have collected about 2,040 units of blood, potentially touching 6,120 people with lifesaving blood products in the form of platelets, plasma and red blood cells.”

And that’s only what you can add up, Bauer added.

“This does not even begin to count the friends, families and neighbors that benefited from the gift of time with their loved ones,” she said. “I feel privileged that I had the opportunity to work with her. She is an incredible role model.”

Bacon, a quiet woman who seems more comfortable talking about others, acknowledges she made a difference, but quickly adds that she had help. Carolyn Downs, Diane Moore and Charlotte Bacon have long been involved and helped to organize the drives – once held at Pembroke City Hall and later at Pembroke United Methodist Church.

Bacon’s husband was also a willing volunteer, whether it was putting out signs or helping get the social hall ready.

“It’s never been a problem for me, I was able to socialize,” Perry said.

“He’s been really good about it,” Marie said.

Perry thinks his wife’s volunteering with American Red Cross made a difference.

“It’s a tribute to her consistency and tenacity,” he said. “Because she volunteered for these nearly 17 years, you’ve got all those pints of blood from a small rural community like Pembroke.”

Some of those donations left memories.

A time when the air conditioning didn’t work, or Marie held babies while mothers donated. Or the young man who passed out and fell face first on the floor.

“I could see he was squeezing that ball too hard and too fast,” Marie recalled.

Or calling donors to remind them they were scheduled to donate.

“I made a lot of phone calls,” she said. “You’ve just got to work at it. And you’ve got to be patient.

And consistent.” COVID-19 changed a lot of things, and has had an impact on blood drives.

So have computers. So have the times, and maybe the people. Fewer people have time to donate these days, and the Red Cross frequently appeals to the public to help fill the need for blood donations. It seems often there are critical shortages.

“People are just too busy,” Marie Bacon said. “It’s hard to get new people to donate. We would see the same people, and most of our people are older and as they get older they sometimes can’t donate.”

Bacon’s realization she needed to donate was always there, but then her mother needed a transfusion of some 12 points and came close to dying.

“I always felt it was something important to do,” she said, noting that at one point recipients of transfusions and their families were asked to replace

blood. And there were always the appeals to the community – through phone calls and signs and advertisements and fliers.

Bacon was responsible for organizing all of it in Pembroke, for a long time. There was much she enjoyed. “There was a lot of socializing going on, I’d see former students and people I hadn’t seen in years,” she said. “(A community blood drive,” is a community get together. That, I have enjoyed.”

“Now it’s someone else’s turn,” she said.