DURHAM -- Some 54 people spent Jan. 12-14 playing in a Triangle Scrabble Club charity tournament at Duke University Hospital.

This was the eighth year for the event to benefit the Duke Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Family Support Program. The program supports patients and their families through treatment at Duke by visiting patients, running errands, delivering meals and more. This year’s tournament raised $6,719, bringing the total raised to more than $40,000 over the history of the event.

The tournament was started by Chapel Hill teacher David Klionsky and the family of a Duke patient, Amalan Iyengar, who was diagnosed with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome — a rare, genetic disease that is fatal in infancy if untreated, and typically requires a bone marrow transplant.

Amalan, now a freshman at N.C. State University, had the idea of combining his love for Scrabble with support for the Duke program that saved his life.