Like many of his colleagues, Jack Thompson, an IT Service and Support Administrator at HonorBridge, has a very personal connection to organ, eye, and tissue donation.
In 2017, what began as a regular afternoon took an unexpected and painful turn. Jack had just fired up his grill, planning to cook pork chops. It was a windy day, and he struggled to keep the charcoal lit. Hoping to solve the problem, he closed the lid and attempted to light it from the front.
“As soon as I did, it was like a flamethrower came out of the front,” Jack recalled. “It instantly cooked my arm. I was in immediate, severe pain—the most intense pain I’ve ever experienced.”
At the time, Jack was living with his mother-in-law and ex-wife. He rushed into the house, and his mother-in-law took him straight to the hospital. From there, they had to rush him to the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center at UNC via ambulance.
“This happened right outside Greenville, and there was no burn unit here,” said Jack. “I had to take a 2.5-hour ambulance ride, and it was the worst ride of my life. I was strapped to a gurney the whole ride there, and it was shaking and moving around. They gave me morphine, but I hadn’t eaten anything and it made me sick. It was not pleasant.”
When Jack arrived at the burn center, his doctors recommended skin graft surgery using donated tissue.
“I’d never had any experience with donation before,” said Jack. “It was all so new to me. The doctor said that donated skin was the best option, considering all the damage that was done—I had first, second, and almost third-degree burns. They said donated skin would heal the best and be better in the long term, so I went with that.”
As a musician, Jack says losing full mobility in his hands and fingers would have been one of the worst possible outcomes.
“I play guitar,” said Jack. “I’ve been playing since I was 14, and I’m 35 this year. I knew I needed full mobility to play, so I stuck to the physical therapy regimen they gave me. I couldn’t move my hand at first, all I could do was keep it straight. As I started to heal, I had to move it around to prevent any permanent stiffness. It’s been nine years now, and I can say that I have full functionality in my arm and full mobility in my fingers. They did an amazing job.”
In late 2025, Jack saw an opening for an IT position at HonorBridge. As a tissue recipient, the mission immediately resonated with him.
“I was like, wow. They do something that has directly impacted me,” said Jack. “I knew from personal experience that their mission makes a difference, that it matters. I felt like it was where I needed to be—I felt a calling to work here.”
Today, Jack wants his tissue donor’s family to know that their sacrifice was not in vain.
“This tissue donation was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me,” said Jack. “I couldn’t imagine my life now without being healed by that experience. It’s made such an impact in my life. Prior to this, I didn’t even know tissue donation was a thing. But thanks to someone else, I can still pick up my guitar and serenade my wife. All I can say is thank you.”
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