The Beginning
Huffington Post
Amy D. Waterman, Ph.D.Associate Professor of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine
I first started coming to Pasadena, California to decorate the Donate Life Rose Parade Float in December, 2009. I was tired and in pain. My husband had left me in November, asking for a divorce. I didn't bother to get a tree. I didn't want to open the red and green tubs filled with stockings, snow globes and red velvet tablecloths. I couldn't fake the holiday spirit -- I was nowhere near it.
Seeing my sadness, a friend of mine responsible for decorating and launching a float about organ and tissue donation in the Rose Parade saw an opportunity. "Come out to Pasadena and help us decorate our float," he said. "I don't know how, but I promise it will help you." So I flew out, arrived on a sunny, Southern California day, and was given a sky blue Donate Life volunteer t-shirt to wear. I put it on gratefully, happy to be an anonymous volunteer instead of Amy Waterman, whose life had just combusted around her.
One of the lead event coordinators put me to work in a hotel ballroom. I lined up nametags in alphabetical order, laid out individual tissue packs onto the tables, and checked in all the people that we were there to honor. They looked pretty ordinary to me -- a group of people like those you might see if you got on a bus. They were from everywhere, of all ages and ethnicities. Some were frail, walking with canes or in wheelchairs. There were a few children. These were the Donate Life float riders and their families, the two dozen people representing the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are touched every year by the cause of organ and tissue donation. On New Year's Day, they would ride the float waving to the world, inspiring up to 40 million people.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
Amy D. Waterman, Ph.D.Associate Professor of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine
I first started coming to Pasadena, California to decorate the Donate Life Rose Parade Float in December, 2009. I was tired and in pain. My husband had left me in November, asking for a divorce. I didn't bother to get a tree. I didn't want to open the red and green tubs filled with stockings, snow globes and red velvet tablecloths. I couldn't fake the holiday spirit -- I was nowhere near it.
Seeing my sadness, a friend of mine responsible for decorating and launching a float about organ and tissue donation in the Rose Parade saw an opportunity. "Come out to Pasadena and help us decorate our float," he said. "I don't know how, but I promise it will help you." So I flew out, arrived on a sunny, Southern California day, and was given a sky blue Donate Life volunteer t-shirt to wear. I put it on gratefully, happy to be an anonymous volunteer instead of Amy Waterman, whose life had just combusted around her.
One of the lead event coordinators put me to work in a hotel ballroom. I lined up nametags in alphabetical order, laid out individual tissue packs onto the tables, and checked in all the people that we were there to honor. They looked pretty ordinary to me -- a group of people like those you might see if you got on a bus. They were from everywhere, of all ages and ethnicities. Some were frail, walking with canes or in wheelchairs. There were a few children. These were the Donate Life float riders and their families, the two dozen people representing the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are touched every year by the cause of organ and tissue donation. On New Year's Day, they would ride the float waving to the world, inspiring up to 40 million people.
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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