The annual calendar features both donors and recipients.

As the 2003 donation-awareness calendar progresses through the seasons, it moves full circle through the donation and transplant process. It offers those involved in many facets of donation a chance to know more about individual donors, and also to meet grateful recipients and see first-hand donation’s life-enhancing and life-giving benefits.

Each month, the calendar features the photograph and story of a different donor or recipient, from a woman who received the gift of life in a double lung transplant to a Vietnam vet and grandfather who teared up at touching moments on TV and became a tissue donor because he had told his family about his wishes to donate in advance.

The Northwest Tissue Services, Northwest Lions Eye Bank, and LifeCenter Northwest produce the calendar annually. More than 4,000 copies are distributed to donor families, hospital and funeral home staff, coroners and medical examiners, driver’s licensing bureaus and state legislators, and other professionals involved in facilitating donation and transplantation.

Among the donors featured this year, one grandmother threw herself a slumber party for her fiftieth birthday; a pretty twelve-year-old girl was so concerned about an ailing frog that she gave it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; another sixteen-year-old girl pursued everything from singing to soccer to auto racing with characteristic energy and enthusiasm.

	Bob Lagasca: “I never thought I would be the recipient of such a gift"

This love of life is carried on by transplant recipients. Organ, cornea, and tissue recipients featured this year include Bob Lagasca, an avid participant in everything from snowboarding and backpacking to soccer and softball, who tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in one of his many pursuits. After his ACL allograft transplant, he’s healing well and says, “I never thought I would be the recipient of such a gift. I will always be thankful for the donor and the donor family’s decision.”

“The calendar allows us to follow the donation process all the way through—from the decision to donate to the benefits that decision brings to so many lives,” explains tissue donation specialist Denise Dodge, who coordinates the calendar’s production. “It is one way we can offer a little more about our donors’ lives and loved ones, but it also gives us a chance to explain how they made their wishes known in advance so that family members knew exactly how to honor their wishes. We hope to put a more personal face on the donation process by telling donors’ stories and by letting recipients share their thanks for generous gifts that changed or saved their lives.”

The importance of telling family members about the decision to donate comes up repeatedly in the donors’ stories. Like many other concerned young people, the vibrant blonde teenager who loved to race go-carts and autos decided to sign the donor designation on her driver’s license. When her mother asked why, she quickly replied, “Why not?”