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The IIAM Virtual Memorial:
is a Flash memorial created to honor those who have donated their gifts to research and medical education through IIAM. It is with awe, solemnity, admiration and gratitude that we view the pictures, read the stories, and pay tribute to these donors. Please share in the memory of their gifts with us.
Donor Memorial:
was established in 2003 at IIAM headquarters to recognize research donors as individuals for their gift that will help save and improve lives. The Donor Memorial contains beloved objects, photos, letters and poems submitted by donor families. Displayed together, these items form a permanent and very personal memorial to their loved ones.
Stories from the IIAM Donor Memorial in Jessup, Pennsylvania
Henry suffered from a rare condition called dermatomyositis. As a frequent patient at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, he was subjected to a constant parade of residents, medical students and nurses-in-training eager to examine him. He never complained. He just wanted to do what he could to help find a cure for the disease so that others wouldn't suffer as he had. When he died in the summer of 2002 at age 64 from complications of dermatomyositis, his family chose to donate his body to IIAM for medical research and education.
Frances grew up on the high plains of Colorado, the daughter of homesteaders. The hard way of life in that region made her a practical sort of person, so when she died in 2001, her family knew just what to do: they donated her body to IIAM for placement in research and education. They hope that research into Alzheimer's, the disease that robbed the last years of her life, will benefit from her gift.
Greenwood Cemetery:
IIAM maintains a burial plot at the Greenwood Cemetery in Allentown, Pa., where the cremated remains of donors are buried. A simple stone marks that spot and an annual ceremony there during National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Month honors all donors. Most families request the return of cremains when a loved one donates his or her body for medical research and education. For those who don't, IIAM provides interment at Greenwood Cemetery at a site dedicated as a permanent memorial to all donors.
"In honor and memory of all donors who have helped
mankind through transplantation and medical research."
Inscription on memorial stone at IIAM burial plot, Greenwood Cemetery, Allentown, Pa.
The Next Place:
I will cherish all the friendship I was fortunate to find,All love and all the laughter in the place I leave behind. All these good things will go with me. They will make my spirit glow. And that light will shine forever in the next place that I go.
Excerpt from "The Next Place" Written and illustrated by Warren Hanson Given to IIAM donor families to honor the memories of their loved ones
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