LIFE SAVER: For NAVAIR Employee, Kidney Donation Marks a Personal Milestone
The Bay Net | NAVAIR
Photo: Helen Wernecke, General Training department head for the Naval Aviation Training Systems Program Office (PMA-205) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., and church-friend Michael Pipkin, recently celebrated their five-year kidney transplant anniversary. Wernecke donated one of her kidneys to Pipkin on Oct. 3, 2007. (Courtesy photo)
An aviation training manager, Helen Wernecke spends most of her days tracking major acquisition milestones for the Navy.
In October, Wernecke marked another key milestone, not measured with databases and engineering metrics, but with grace.
The General Training department head for the Naval Aviation Training Systems Program Office (PMA-205) responded to an email in May 2007, and with the click of a mouse, triggered a chain of events that led her to donate a kidney to fellow church member Michael Pipkin.
More than five years later, Wernecke and Pipkin celebrated the journey that began with an email request from his wife. In the email, Dawn Pipkin shared that her husband, born with only one kidney, needed a transplant. She asked friends and family with type O blood to consider contacting the Washington Hospital Center to be screened as donors.
Five minutes later, Wernecke forwarded the email to her husband, Ray Wernecke, telling him she was interested in becoming a donor.
“As soon as I read [the email], I thought ‘I’m type O blood,’†Wernecke said. “‘How can I turn my back on this man without even giving it some sort of due diligence?’â€
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
Photo: Helen Wernecke, General Training department head for the Naval Aviation Training Systems Program Office (PMA-205) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., and church-friend Michael Pipkin, recently celebrated their five-year kidney transplant anniversary. Wernecke donated one of her kidneys to Pipkin on Oct. 3, 2007. (Courtesy photo)
An aviation training manager, Helen Wernecke spends most of her days tracking major acquisition milestones for the Navy.
In October, Wernecke marked another key milestone, not measured with databases and engineering metrics, but with grace.
The General Training department head for the Naval Aviation Training Systems Program Office (PMA-205) responded to an email in May 2007, and with the click of a mouse, triggered a chain of events that led her to donate a kidney to fellow church member Michael Pipkin.
More than five years later, Wernecke and Pipkin celebrated the journey that began with an email request from his wife. In the email, Dawn Pipkin shared that her husband, born with only one kidney, needed a transplant. She asked friends and family with type O blood to consider contacting the Washington Hospital Center to be screened as donors.
Five minutes later, Wernecke forwarded the email to her husband, Ray Wernecke, telling him she was interested in becoming a donor.
“As soon as I read [the email], I thought ‘I’m type O blood,’†Wernecke said. “‘How can I turn my back on this man without even giving it some sort of due diligence?’â€
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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