It was only about 3 pm when heart-recipient Terry Peterson took the microphone at the Spokane-area Donor Family Recognition Ceremony one Sunday last October. But Peterson, a warm, barrel-chested man, said, “I’ll try not to keep you here past 9 o’clock tonight telling you how grateful I am.” In September, at the Seattle-area ceremony, Northwest Tissue Services Medical Director Dr. Chappie Conrad told families and friends of tissue, cornea and organ donors, “Your consent for donation represents the greatest example of courage and generosity I can think of.”

Judy Grogan offered comfort.

In 2001, the donors’ gifts in the Washington, northern Idaho, and Montana region resulted in the transplants of 6,000 tissues, 2,400 corneas, and 444 organs. The 2002 recognition ceremonies, including a third one in Great Falls, Montana, are sponsored annually by the Northwest Tissue Services, Northwest Lions Eye Bank, and LifeCenter Northwest. They give donor families the chance to come together and share both the sorrow of losing a loved one and the comfort of deciding in favor of donation.

As Judy Grogan, the daughter of organ and cornea donor Mary Grogan, said at this year’s Seattle ceremony, “We have experienced the worst and it has brought out our best. We embrace the tears that come, let ourselves grieve, and move on—slowly. We all know the word ‘forget’ is not in our vocabulary.”

“We have experienced
the worst and it has brought out our best.”
– Judy Grogan at the Seattle-area
Donor Family Ceremony

Other speakers at each location included transplant professionals, organ recipients, and those awaiting life-saving transplants. During the programs, the names of all donors represented by family members were read. The ceremonies were attended by 250 people in the Seattle area at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency Hotel, 75 at Spokane’s West Coast River Inn, and 75 at Great Falls’ Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center.

Families and friends also honored donors in displays of photographs and memorabilia—including everything from a box of seashells to a baseball jersey to a family Bible. In addition, an exhibit of the Donor Memorial Quilt Project brought life and color to the surroundings. Many donor families have contributed individual quilt squares to the five-by-five-foot quilts as tributes to loved ones. Each square measures eight-by-eight inches and gives a striking and personal look at a family member—one man and his undeniable work ethic are commemorated in the appliquéd image of his work boots, hard hat, lunch box and thermos, while a young child’s gift of life is remembered in the figures of paper dolls with interlocking hands.

This year, the Seattle and Spokane ceremonies are available for the first time on DVD or videotape. To order a DVD or videotape free of charge or to contribute a quilt square, contact Tissue Services Lead Donation Specialist Shari Fowler, at 1-800-858-2282 or sharif@psbc.org.