Survivors Look Back 30 Years Later [Video]

Photographer Harry Connolly was in search of a new project back in 1993 when he saw a photo of a young boy in a magazine, which illustrated a father’s story of his son’s futile fight against cancer. Since Connolly’s mom had died of cancer when he was just 18, he decided right then and there to take on telling the stories of young cancer patients.

At Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, he met three young people from various backgrounds: Eli Kahn, then 2, Heather Brogdon, 9, and Keith Patrick, 16. The families agreed to have their photos taken over three years.

The result was “Fighting Chance: Journey Through Childhood Cancer,” published in 1998 with a foreword by the late author Tom Clancy.

“Years later, Eli’s mother said, ‘Your photographs helped me understand what we were going through,’ ” Connolly, now 72, tells PEOPLE.

Harry stayed in …