A Night to Remember

April 3, 2009
Intermountain Donor Services
Family Recognition Ceremony

What a beautiful event! Held at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center - a great venue, everything calm, in order, and just plain nicely done.

This shows 3 Frames of the donor quilt - 3 more frames on the other wall






This is part of the reception area, looking into the meeting room



Alana Fivas and Karen Hannahs - the IDS Family Support Dept! Karen is the social worker who handles all the interaction between IDS and the donor families after the process - she also is the liason between recipients who write thank you letters to the donor families, or the donor families who write to tell the recipients about their loved one.



From about halfway back during the tech check. It all worked great!



600 chairs there!




I hope you've seen Zach's version as a slide show -- but I just wanted you to get the perspective on where it was shown!!!




And yes, I really did get up there!!




I would do some things differently (of course!) but it was an amazing thing to be in a room with so many people and so much love. Afterwards, I had a chance to talk to several people and hear their stories. One mom had a 7 year old son who was injured at a church activity - one father told me that his 18 yr old son was killed the morning after his daughter's wedding, in an accident in the parking lot at his work. One of the other speakers was a 15 yr old girl, a heart recipient at age 9. Her donor family came up from Texas to meet her that day. They were so happy to see her, and know it was "Joseph's heart". The most memorable part was staying after for an hour, even after all the help had left, to talk with 2 brothers and their wives - each had independently lost a young child in the past 15 months, and wanted to know if I would just answer their questions. "What do you say when people ask how many children do you have?" "How do you stop reliving that day?" "How do you get through the holidays?" "Who was driving the car? How do you deal with the guilt?" We had a really sweet hour or so together. I only wish I had felt more at liberty to testify to the real source of comfort, and to watch conference today -- I was thinking of them so much during the afternoon session! Wow. To hear Elder Scott tell his story in such detail was really powerful. I hope they were listening. I hope they call me, so I can keep in touch -- because of confidentiality issues, we can't contact donor families unless they contact us first -- but they have my card.


Thanks to each of you for believing in me and cheering me on. I felt is a tangible force - as well as knowing this was one unequivocably of those events where I know in whom I have trusted, and that it certainly wasn't of my own doing. A night to remember!