For 12-year-old Timothy Blackford, losing a little bit of hair is no big deal, especially if it means showing support for a good friend who is fighting for his life.

Blackford's friend Michael Hudson, 15, was diagnosed Feb. 13 with acute myelogenous leukemia.

According to the American Cancer Society, AML is a form of cancer that originates in the bone marrow and can progress into the blood. The disease begins in cells that would become blood cells. If untreated, the disease could spread and can be fatal.

Blackford and the rest of the Trinity Baptist Church youth group didn't want Hudson to feel alone when he began to lose his hair as a side affect of chemotherapy treatments.

The team met up as usual Wednesday evening, but haircuts substituted for songs and worship. In a small amount of time, the upstairs youth room was turned into a barbershop, and 20 boys and adult men lined up for buzz cuts.

"He wouldn't have any hair and I decided to do it for him," Blackford said.

After the haircut was finished, Blackford's friends gathered around him, taking turns feeling his bare head.

Trinity youth volunteers Jason Colvin and Adam Wilmoth came up with the hair cutting idea and presented it to the rest of the group.

"I had heard of others doing it," Colvin said. "I wanted to do something to show support of Michael."

He said a bald head is a small gesture of encouragement.

"We wanted to show love and support and teach our guys how to demonstrate God's love for us," Colvin said.

Wilmoth said they videotaped Wednesday's event so they could show Hudson how much he is loved by the church congregation.

"Hopefully this will be encouraging to Michael," Wilmoth said.

Holly Morris, a family friend of Hudson's, said the teenager lives in Ardmore but spent some of his childhood in Norman. He visits his friends at Trinity Baptist when time allows.

Morris said the illness was discovered at a recent doctor's visit when Hudson sought treatment for what he believed was a staph infection. Physicians ordered a round of blood work to rule out infection. When the test results came back, Hudson and his family were surprised to learn the diagnosis was leukemia.