Hello and welcome to the Get to Life podcast where we have conversations about organ, tissue, and eye donation. I'm Roy Steele. I am Joey Boudreau. Joe, I feel like I have music in my bones.
I got music in my bones too, Laurie. This is Gazzle Boudreau. Oh, would you give up something? Oh, oh, good.
I'm someone. And you'll say... We should take this act on the road. I mean, I've got a mic in my hand.
I'm gonna say urch! After we talk to the real guys singing there that sounds better than me and you. Maybe just a little bit. Yeah, I mean, but in the car, I think we could rock it right like a little bit.
Absolutely. We sound a good Troy's over there saying we sound a really good. Troy's our IT Guru Roaster. Thanks, Troy.
We're gonna use that. We did it to Liza's. My voice. There you go.
But the real singer, songwriter there is David St. Romaine singing. And there's a line in that song about donation. It's just so powerful.
And guess who's on the podcast today, Joe? David St. Romaine. What a treat.
Oh, yeah. So we're gonna hear about him and maybe some projects coming down the pipe. We always love that. But you know what?
We also love when you share the podcast. We try to make it as easy as possible, guys. You can find us on loba.org slash podcast. Or as always, you can find us on Apple podcast, Google Play or whatever your favorite podcast that might be.
We are everywhere. We are everywhere. We're trying to be. We're trying to say.
Japan, Ghana. And you can help us spread the word PR team partner. We love that. Also, we're on social media.
We know that you are too. Facebook. We're donate life, Louisiana. Twitter and Instagram.
We're at donate life, LA and hello. I think this means we're legit. We are legit because we have hotline. We do have a hotline.
What? What does that always give us a call? That number is 504648347. Like music to my ears, Joe.
Like music to my ears. Okay. So let's hire a professional. Maybe we can ask David St.
Romaine to do that a little later, buddy. But all good, all fun. All for a great cause right here on the gifted life. Let's do it.
Here on the gifted life, we want to talk about an artist with a huge heart when it comes to donation. Donate it his time to help us spread awareness about organ, eye and tissue donation. You got to love that. Plus, it was a huge hit.
His name is David St. Romaine. I guess you could say he's pretty good. He's a little bit better than us.
He's fantastic. I can listen to him sing all day. And he visited with our own Laurie Steel. Let's take a listen.
Laurie Steel here with a gifted life on location in Baton Rouge with singer, songwriter David St. Romaine. I'm excited. I want to audition for you right now.
Hello. You're a goof. I love you Laurie. We're having fun.
So this guy has a lot of talent, obviously. But tell us what is it that you do, David St. Romaine. We know your singer, songwriter.
Tell us about who you are. Well, on a daily basis, I wake up and take care of a two year old right now. And then I read for about an hour. And then I try to write a little bit during the day, do some phone calls and then try to figure out how to keep this ball rolling.
But I love to write music and do things that have purpose and meaning. So that's kind of a daily chore. Yeah, I love that because your CD is actually in my vehicle now. And the one song that I listen to is, that's love.
Then sound like that sounds much better than that. But I love this song. I love the meaning behind it. Can you feel it on that song?
Well, I wrote this song with Jason Matthews and Jim McCormick and we got together and it was just, we wanted to write about love and really the core meaning of what love was. And it's about serving others. And that's really what that song's about. There's a verse in it about donation of an organ and it really hit home with Lopa's message and what the whole, the message of giving life and donating life.
And so that was able to bring together this unity between us. So it's great. We love it. So David is just an all around great guy, great singer, but with a big heart.
So volunteer it is time to come out to one of our low-bevents in the Baton Rouge area saying that's love and some other tunes that we were all dancing to. We actually have a little video that you can find on our Facebook page, Donate Life, Louisiana. But why do that? I mean, you got other stuff to do.
How would you dedicate a Saturday, almost all day, to come out for us? Well, it's really easy when you get there and you see the life and you see what's been saved and what one person's traumatic, maybe situation that they've lost someone. They've also been able to see life come from another person because of their family member. And so witnessing that firsthand at that event was after the fact I had already decided to go do it, Donate My Time.
But I don't know. It's my heart. It's what I love to do and see people to serve. I just think serving is definitely where my own healing and my own walk is.
What was cool was that? We knew we had you for a couple of hours and then you had to get to another event. But then as part of our events, we have people come up and share their stories and I could just hear you say, Amen. Yes.
That's amazing. And then I think you stayed longer than you should have, right? And we love that. Always.
I always wear out my welcome. That's for sure going to happen. No, we had a, yeah, it was great. It was really amazing.
Y'all did a wonderful job. The Raveline Run for Life is an amazing event. I was really proud to be a part of it. Well, we appreciate you and we hope to partner with you on other events.
You know, I'm always thinking. I'm not 18. Got something coming up. I have a feeling.
So people want to know more about you. What's your next gig? How can we finally support you? What do they do?
Well, I'm in the band, Vidalia. So there's Vidalia music, Facebook page, Vidalia music and like the onion, Vidalia music. And then also my Facebook page, David Saint-Ramein. Like I say, it's a Catholic lettuce with no E.
It's the easiest way to figure it out. I'm just going to ask you. And then we, you know, just this year coming up, we got a new EP coming out for Vidalia. We've got some, you know, some real things happening across the board with LOPA and with good events, other events going on.
And so I'm really proud that of what the year's got in store. So we're going to finally hopefully you'll be back on the gifted life and then we'll see you next week. Yeah, I think we should have some. We're talking about some kind of gay look coming up.
I'm going to sign up guys. Okay, let's make it happen. Zalad's good. All right.
Thank you, David. Saint-Ramein. It's now time in the podcast to honor a hero that hero today is Lloyd Nuts. Lloyd went to work with Western Electric out of high school.
This company became AT&T, which changed the loose in technologies. He moved a lot in the United States with his job before retiring. His love of the Dallas Cowboys was well known as was his love for the LSU Tigers. Lloyd worked in the Village Lions in the autumn for many years.
He also worked as a volunteer for Action Food Bank. Janice and Lloyd were married for 57 years. They hit two daughters and five grandchildren who were loved always. And you can learn more about Lloyd and our heroes on our heroes page, lopa.org.
Right now we do want to pause and say thank you to Lloyd for the gift of life. In our question and answer segment today, this one's from Facebook, Joe. I was a recipient of a kidney from an anonymous living donor. That's pretty special, right?
It is. How can I find them to thank them? What a special person that is to donate to someone that you have never met. I'd like to begin with that.
I certainly see why the need for thanks there. Yeah, letting angel home. In these situations, of course, they are somewhat challenging, but you would start with your coordinator, your transplant coordinator at your transplant center and let them know what your wishes are so that you can then, the next step in general, would be that you would be able to write to that person because of course they've got the information and that's what they do. They in situations like this, they help facilitate the correspondence between donor or donor family in some situations and recipient.
So you would start by reaching out to your transplant coordinator and writing a letter to your anonymous donor, thanking them. Now from there, that's where it gets a little tricky because they are anonymous and maybe they want to remain so. So it's a situational thing. It depends on that particular person, but certainly that's how you would start.
And oftentimes they do eventually want to meet. Yeah, in this day and age that that is the case, but just keep those things in mind. Good advice, Joe. If you have a question for us, info at low-pad.org.
And remember, we have the hotline 504648347. Communicate with us. We'd love it. All right, this musical edition of the Kifted Life has come to a close and we do have to thank David Saint-Romein, I mean, donating his time, helping to spur conversations about organaean tissue donation.
That's what we want. And who knows what's to come? Yep. He's willing to work with us to do more.
I love that. He is one person making a difference. Yeah, using his talents. Much like me, Laura, using his musical talents to make a difference.
That's what you do, Joe. That's what I do. Oh, I'm going to go with you on this one. Okay, because it's the new year and I'm just going to smile and support.
That's what I'm going to do. All right. Listen, if you want to hear more from David Saint-Romein, David Saint-Romein.com, Romain with no E on the end. On Facebook, it's David Saint-Romein music.
You don't iTunes search for David Saint-Romein. Lots of good music out there. I'm actually in jam into a CD. I'll sing some for you, Joe, after we turn these mics off.
I don't want everybody to see a lot of ears out there. But we do hope that you go out folks and do something today that you don't normally do to help us make life happen. You can start by signing up to be a donor if you haven't already. RegisterMeet.org.
It's that easy. It does not take a lot of your time. RegisterMe.org, everyone. Have a good one.
This is a production of the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency, or LOPA. The gifted life is hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Boudreau, and Sally Gentry. Our producers are Kirsten Hines and Shalom Caraway. We are recorded, engineered, and mixed in our Metery, Louisiana studio by Troy Perez.