Lansing-Lorna Brinkerhuff’s shirt read “Wife of heart transplant #174” as she walked side by side with her husband, John, who underwent the operation 12 years ago at University of Michigan Hospital.
After collapsing in a restaurant in 1984, tests revealed that the pumping chambers in John Brinkerhuff’s heart were slowly dying, he said Friday while in Lansing to support a program designed to increase organ donations nationwide.
“When I was told that I was going to die at the age of 42, I only asked God for three things,” said John Brinkerhuff, now 60, of Dimondale. “Let me live long enough to see the kids graduate from school, I would kind of like to live long enough to see what it sounds like to be called grandpa and the really dumb request was to live to see the year 2000.”
Because of the surgery, he says proudly, “You know what, I got them all.”
A 28-year-old Michigan man who died in a boating accident donated his heart to John Brinkerhuff. All of the man’s main organs were donated, John Brinkerhuff said.
“Men are only as great as they are kind,” Tommy Thompson, Health and Human Services Secretary, said Friday at the Michigan Manufacturers Association building while inviting Michigan businesses to join the initiative. The Gift of Life Donation Initiative is dedicated to making the public aware of the need for organ donation through the workplace, the cabinet member said.
Secretary of State Candice Miller, who joined Thompson in Lansing, invited businesses to participate in the program by encouraging employees to become potential organ donors. About 80,000 Americans are waiting for an organ or tissue donation - including 2,400 in Michigan - and 16 die each day because there was no organ or tissue available, officials say.
“We began a new program that all the goals were to increase public awareness of this very, very important issue,” Miller said. In 1996, Michigan was ranked 45th in donor registration with only 15,000 to 16,000 names. It is now 13th in the nation with about 600,000 names registered, Miller said.
In an effort to promote awareness, officials implemented methods for easing the registration process for organ donation by offering a writable area to indicate donor choices rather than a sticker, which was used in the past.
The state also started a postcard program that sends messages to residents with state mailings or license renewals. There are about 2 million postcards sent out annually, Miller said.
“It is almost a ridiculously simple program I suppose,” Miller said. “The results have been extraordinary.”
For more information on the campaign, go to www.organdonor.gov/workplace.htm.
