Initiative brings donor awareness

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.