WINCHESTER — Those who die can help others continue living if they’ve donated their organs.
Kelly Curtis’ son, Tommy, signed up to be a donor when he got his driver’s license at 16. She never imagined that just a few years later, his organs would be transplanted into six seriously ill people.
Curtis spoke about her experience coping with Tommy’s untimely death — and then getting to know some of those whose lives his organs saved — Friday afternoon during a Donor Remembrance Service at Winchester Medical Center.
Being a selfless person, “I think he would have been thrilled” to know how many people he helped, said Curtis, who lives in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
Tommy was 24 when he died in 2023 after battling alcoholism, for which he sought help numerous times.
Along with alcoholism, Tommy battled depression. Following his discharge from the Marines, “he couldn’t reconnect with the civilian world,” his mother said, and his drinking continued.
“I’m proud of him, and I’m proud of his fight” for sobriety, she said. “He just didn’t win it.”
After he died, Curtis was afraid that her son’s organs might not be suitable for donation. But doctors told her all of them remained viable.
Tommy’s lungs were transplanted into a 14-year-old girl in Maine who suffered from severe pulmonary hypertension. His heart went into a 30-year-old Virginia man whose heart from a previous transplant, which he received when was only eight days old, failed.
Curtis has gotten to know those recipients well and considers them to be like family. Noting that the heart recipient and his wife recently had a baby, she said she feels sort of like a grandma.
In addition, Tommy’s kidneys and pancreas were transplanted into other patients.
His mother encourages people to sign up to be an organ donor, or to allow family member’s organs to be harvested following their deaths.
“Even though you’ve suffered a loss,” Curtis said, “it’s somebody else’s chance at a new life.”
Friday afternoon’s service in honor of organ donors and recipients was attended by about 50 people. It was held on the eve of National Donor Sabbath Weekend, an annual event when faith communities come together to promote organ and tissue donations.
Donors “have touched countless lives” by providing “their extraordinary gifts of life for others,” said Olaoluwa Oladubu, the hospital’s head chaplain.
“Each donor is a true hero who gave life to a stranger at a difficult time,” said Rick Fowler, senior director of operations for LifeNet Health, a Virginia Beach nonprofit that helps facilitate organ donations.
“I’m continuously amazed and uplifted” by donors’ generosity, Fowler said.
LifeNet staff recommend going online to donatelifevirginia.org to learn more about becoming an organ donor.
An impromptu speaker, Rene Haley of Winchester, recalled her late sister, Sabrina Dano of Strasburg, donating her skin, eyes, corneas, kidneys and liver.
Dano died in 2018 after suffering a massive heart attack, Haley recalled. She was 48.
Some of her donated organs were later transplanted. Haley said she has since become friends with one of the recipients who she now considers her “soul sister.”
The pain of losing a close relative doesn’t ever fully go away, she said, although “it does get a little better” over time.
By donating her organs, “my sister lives on” in a sense, Haley continued. It comforts her.
Haley mentioned that her husband has since received a liver transplant.
During the service, 13 area residents who received organs during the past year were recognized, as were more than 140 people who’ve donated organs through the hospital’s assistance. Ornaments honoring them were placed on a Christmas tree inside the hospital’s Conference Center.
Winchester Medical Center doesn’t perform organ transplant surgeries. Rather, it coordinates for patients the process of receiving transplants at other hospitals in Virginia.
