MU Health Care to commemorate donors at Saturday’s Tournament of Roses Parade

Posted to On Campus by Jimmy Hibsch

MU Health Care will celebrate the 80 organ, tissue and eye donors from central Missouri during the 122nd Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif., on Saturday.

In its eighth appearance in the Rose Parade, the Donate Life float will be decorated by roses symbolizing each of 2009’s donors from University Hospital and the MU Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

The parade is annually viewed by more than 50 million people, and the float hopes to instill the importance of organ and tissue donations in the viewers. The float’s theme, “Seize the Day!,” will be donned with kites with 60 floragraph portraits of deceased donors. An artist’s rendering of the float is available here.

“The Donate Life float offers a unique opportunity to celebrate the lives of our organ, tissue and eye donors before a worldwide television audience,” said Lori Kramer-Clark, hospital services coordinator for Midwest Transplant Network, in a news release. “We hope the families of our donors can take comfort in knowing their loved ones will be recognized during the Tournament of Roses Parade.”

To fund the roses, MU Health Care’s Donor Council collected money through private fundraisers. The Donor Council consists of staff members ranging from doctors to chaplains and support staff.

“As a Donor Council, we witness every day the powerful ways in which donation and transplantation touches lives,” said Mark Wakefield, M.D., chair of the Donor Council and director of the hospital’s renal transplant program. “The Donate Life float is a great way to honor and remember those MU Health Care donors who gave the gift of life through organ, tissue and eye donation.”

MU Health Care will host a ceremony to further honor these donors at University Hospital in April.