Meet Donors Like You

John Harkey and Jonathan Levin have a 25-year friendship built on trust. “He’s on the very short list of people for whom I would do anything."

Though K. Becky Zagor, BSN’80, RN, MN, decided very early to become a nurse, she says the decision to attend Duke wasn’t as clear-cut. First, she didn’t think she was strong enough academically to compete. And second, her father had been out of work for six months during a tough 1970s recession, meaning her family couldn’t afford Duke.

When Robert Yowell, MD’61, HS’64-’69, entered the Duke University School of Medicine in 1957, he was, by a pretty fair margin, the youngest student at the school.

The $163,000 that Sandra Davis, BSN’82, as trustee of the Bronson/Knapp Foundation, gave to the Duke University School of Nursing wasn’t the largest gift to the Duke Forward Campaign, but it certainly was one of the most significant.

Jeanne Caldwell didn’t have Alzheimer’s disease, yet she knew firsthand the devastation it can cause. For 11 years she cared for her mother who had the disease. After her mother’s death in 2015, Caldwell was determined to do what she could to make sure other families did not have to endure the hardships of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.

As a high school freshman, Elianna started baking “cookies” for their horses, using ingredients like oat flour and molasses. “It's so nice to give them something you put effort into, something from the heart," she says.

An anonymous family’s generosity will enable Duke University School of Medicine to establish one of the nation’s only programs dedicated specifically to helping girls and women with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) has been given approval to launch a Phase 1 clinical trial of one of its most promising antibody treatments for COVID-19. This would be a temporary treatment until a vaccine is developed. The DHVI also is developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine that would combat future iterations of COVID-19 and similar viruses, and also researching if saliva can be used as an accurate indicator of COVID-19 infection.

A potential new vaccine developed by members of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute has proven effective in protecting monkeys and mice from a variety of coronavirus infections — including SARS-CoV-2 as well as the original SARS-CoV-1 and related bat coronaviruses that could potentially cause the next pandemic. The findings were published in the journal Nature.

Ever since Duke Cancer Institute helped Meg Lindenberger survive breast cancer more than a decade ago, she and her husband, Bill, have been faithful supporters.