An Australian man credited with saving 2.4 million babies through his record-breaking blood plasma donations over six decades, has died, his family said Tuesday. He was 88. James Harrison, a retired state railway department clerk,

"It wasn't one big heroic act. It was just a lifetime of being there and doing these small acts of good bit by bit." When he was just 14, James Harrison of New South Wales, Australia, needed to undergo lung surgery that required a series of life-saving blood transfusions.

James Harrison's rare blood, which he donated over a thousand times, is estimated to have saved the lives of over 2 million children in Australia.