Rotary official uses personal experience to stress organ donations

The Randolph Guide | Larry Penkava
Rotary District Governor Cookie Billings of Jamestown, second from right, spoke to the Asheboro Rotary Club last week. With her are, from left, Robert Graves, Area 8 Foundation advocate, District Governor-nominee Larry Lassiter, District Assistant Governor Jaci Betts and Asheboro Rotary President Stan Beck. 
The Rotary district governor drew on a personal experience to exhort Asheboro club members to register as organ donors.

Cookie Billings of Jamestown visited the Asheboro Rotary Club at Pinewood Country Club last week to reveal goals for the coming year, including recruitment of new members, keeping current members engaged and supporting the Rotary Foundation. But the closest to her heart was organ donation.

Billings said a nephew of hers was born with cystic fibrosis, a chronic disease that destroys the lungs. Treatments had kept him alive until two years ago when he was admitted to UNC Hospitals, his “last chance” being a double-lung transplant.

Even as family members were fearing the worst, she said, “they found a match and he got his double-lung transplant. I witnessed an absolute miracle.”

Billings said her nephew is now “a living, breathing example that we need more organ donors registered.”
______________________________________________________ 
"You have the power to SAVE lives." 
To register as a donor TODAY
In California: 
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org 
Outside California: 
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.net

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