A lanky nine-year-old girl with a gap-toothed grin, a father caught in a playful moment hugging his young son, and a handsome smiling teenager posing confidently against a background of dappled sunlit greenery — these are just a few of the tissue, cornea and organ donors and recipients pictured in this year’s annual Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness calendar.

“Tissue and organ donation encompasses so much,” says Denise Dodge, a Northwest Tissue Services donation coordinator who spearheads the calendar’s design and production. “The calendar puts faces on an expansive process. Every year, the people in the calendar represent a cross-section of those who donate and receive tissue and organs.”

A joint annual effort of the Northwest Tissue Services, LifeCenter Northwest and the Northwest Lions Eye Bank, the calendar is distributed to over 4,000 people, including donor families, hospital staff who work with donors and their families, other donation agencies around the country, and state legislators.

It also goes to funeral directors, medical examiners and coroners within the Northwest Tissue Services’s region (Washington, northern Idaho, and Montana). A short biographical sketch accompanies each photo to give recipients and donor families a chance to express their feelings. “I have a great deal of gratitude for donors. I hope my children can learn from such extraordinary examples,” says one recipient. Dodge stresses that the calendar’s purpose is not only to raise awareness about tissue and organ donation, but also to “bring the process full circle for the large percentage of people who work in donation, but only occasionally hear about the benefits. The calendar gives them a chance to see some of the many different ways transplants help people.”

The 2002 calendar’s title is “Today,” and each month features the banner, “today is the perfect day to . . .” A note for each week offers such suggestions as “thank a teacher,” “take a trip to see the ocean,” or “croon the night away with Frank Sinatra,” in homage to a donor who was such an avid fan that even his license plate bore the singer’s name.

Wing Fong, the calendar’s designer, proposed the theme. The first planning meeting took place “not too long after Sept. 11,” says Dodge. “There were constant reminders that life is precious. So many people began to realize that life is truly a gift… a gift that’s honored so much by tissue donors and recipients, their families and friends, and the professionals in the field who are using this year’s calendar.”