Hello and welcome to the Gifted Life Podcast where we have conversations about Oregon, tissue and eye donation. I'm Laurie Steele and this is a very special episode of the Gifted Life. Our executive producer, Kirsten Heintz, had a unique opportunity and boarded she take it all the way to California. This is one you don't want to miss.
It's a little different than what you're used to, but we hope that you love it just as much as we do. We love it so much. We want other people to hear it too, but we need your help. We try to make it as easy as possible for you guys to find and share us.
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So right now, let's turn things over to Kirsten Heintz and this special episode. Every time I hear music like that, I can't help but think about a parade and who doesn't love a parade. Whether it was your high school homecoming parade, the hometown Christmas parade, or a big ol' Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday parade. There's nothing quite like seeing those first set of flashing lights coming down the street from the motorcade.
Secondly, it's all about to start. On the excitement, you can literally feel as the bass drum leaves the tempo to the marching band. All the dance teams and horses and the pageantry of the parade dignitaries. And of course, the floats.
This is Kirsten Heintz, one of the gifted life podcast producers. And I've been to many parades in my life growing up in New Orleans. I've even rode in a couple. I didn't think anything could top in New Orleans parade.
With our decadent flair and our love of music, a unique culture, but that changed after my recent experience at the Rose Bowl Parade. Lope has been a sponsor of the Donate Life float for the last 10 years. And to celebrate this milestone, we sponsored two donor families. And I was lucky enough to accompany them.
I was basically their own personal paparazzi pest, sitting on my microphone or my camera in their faces the entire trip. This also gave me the opportunity to work alongside the families and help decorate the float. It's an experience I don't think any of us will ever forget. The basic structure of the floats are built months in advance.
But the entire float has to be covered in flowers and organic materials. It's one of the rules for the Rose Parade. There's nothing artificial. So since you're dealing with all live materials, everything has to be built and put together and decorated basically in 10 days.
And these floats are massive. So to make this happen, it requires thousands of volunteer hours for each float. And you can imagine the smells, the amazing colors, with literally millions of flowers used. One of the estimates I read that it takes about 18 million flowers for the whole parade to be decorated.
I was amazed by the creativity of the different materials they use. They've got berries and fruits on the wings of butterflies. They use kelp on the beacon of the macaws. It's shaved coconut to create white pages of books.
And of course, the crew that I decorated with, we will never forget our lesson in pedaling. So pedaling involves cutting the petals off of flowers and gluing each one individually onto the float. It was a pretty tedious task and we quickly learned how serious the float captains take this. But we finally got it right.
We even got promoted to camera side, which we thought was a big accomplishment. There were so many beautiful flowers and plants and sometimes your eyes didn't even know where to look. There was just so much beauty on these floats. But there was one special item that probably had the most meaning and it can only be found on the donate life float.
And those were floor graphs. The theme of this year's float was the gift of time. It was this gorgeous tropical float with big macaws and right in the center was this massive Aztec and all around the calendar were the 44 floor graphs. And on the donate life float, the floor graphs are of our Oregonian tissue donors.
And two of them were from Louisiana, our floor graph honorees, were Christian Nelson and Kelly Terrio. Both Christian and Kelly were registered donors and it's a decision their families are very proud of. Kelly's family loves to talk about his great personality and amazing sense of humor. And his first gift of time was served as star country.
He joined the US Air Force after high school and after serving two years in the Middle East, he became an active firefighter for the Columbus Air Force Base. As a registered donor, Kelly was able to save five people and they are now enjoying the gift of more time with their loved ones. Christian's mom, Jen, shared her thoughts about the significance of the float theme while we were talking at the parade. The gift that he gave and continues to give, I mean, it's just, it's perfect theme for this float and him, you know, being a hero and being on that float is just, I mean, it's an honor.
It's a huge honor and he's just, I don't know, I don't even know how to put into words. I'm just so excited and happy and just full of pride. One of the best things about the donate life rose parade are all the events leading up to the parade. In addition to finishing floor graphs and helping to decorate the float, the donor families got to spend time with other donor families at various events.
They placed roses on the float and honor of their loved ones. They had designated meeting times in places where they could trade stickers of their loved ones floor graph and share stories about them. There was a wonderful brunch from the families of all the floor graph honorees and it was there that we first met, Kerry Holland. Kerry created individual quilts for each of the 44 donor families whose loved ones were honored with a floor graph on the sheer split.
When I talked to Kerry, I found out that she really understands what these families are going through. They're not the only ones out there that are going through, you know, I'm, you know, from my husband received an organ and then my brother was able to save two lives by giving his kidneys to two strangers and so I'm kind of on both ends of the giving and taking and I just want these families to appreciate the fact that their family members done because I appreciate what my brother done because of what my husband went through and receiving an organ himself. So it was very great to be able to do that and I loved making the quilts and then I made them and the quilts kind of picked the person because I read each story of the family members that received the quilt and I went through my quilts and basically the quilt spoke to me and said, okay, this family's gonna get this quilt. It's so amazing because meeting the families today, so many of them told me, oh my god, this was their favorite color.
Oh my god, this is exactly what they would want, you know, and it's just touches my heart that they were so happy to receive these and to me it's like our loved ones are out there with parts of them out there that are shared with other people too. So that's very interwoven. I love the symbolism and Kelly's mom, Julie, was blown away by the quilt she received. As soon as it was opened, the blue in it popped out at me.
Of course, his baby blue eyes. He showed up again. His the quilt has lots of blue in it, so once again shaken at the core because my baby showed up for me again. It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful and amazing that you made so many and picked each one like intuitively new which one to give to you.
She didn't know my son, didn't know me, but somehow he went to her and told her what my quilt needed to look like. It's amazing. There was a wonderful brunch for the families of all the floor graph honorees. This was not just a brunch, but a celebration of life.
Musician, American Idol contestant, and two-time organ recipient, Scott McIntyre, performed for all the attendees. We were so excited to catch up with him and learn about his journey, upcoming project, and what the gift of time means to him. Organization has touched me in a very profound way. I've actually been the recipient of two kidneys in my lifetime.
I've had two kidney transplants. The first was a while ago, a lot of people know me from American Idol and the first kidney transplant was before my time on American Idol. I went from not being able to make music at all to making music on that show, which was amazing for me. It's because of that gift that I auditioned and married my wife, Christina, and got to do so many things.
Then I actually needed a second kidney transplant and once again went through that journey and as I was getting sicker and sicker, I eventually got that phone call again and went through my second kidney transplant except the second time. It was given to me by an anonymous donor. It was a living donor, but it was someone I'd never met, never did anything for, didn't know who it was, and this person was given of themselves so that I could live. I got to meet her six weeks after and she was 27 years old at the time.
Her name is Misty and she had three kids and it's just a beautiful person. I just gave her a hug and said, you saved my life. That's amazing. I was going to ask if you got to meet.
So is that your inspiration for being here and what was it what was the day like for you today? The day was amazing for me today. Yeah, it's anytime I get to speak on behalf of recipients to donor families and even living donors too, but lots of donor families here this morning, obviously, for the Florigraph brunch. It's such an honor.
Everyone who spoke said it, just the privilege we have to even stand in front of so many people at once who have made that courageous decision in the hardest moments of their life losing a loved one to decide to give hope to someone else out of that tragedy. It takes a lot of courage and takes a lot of foresight and I'm so thankful that every family here made that decision for life. It really inspires me to live every day to the fullest. That's amazing and hope is a new continuing theme for you now, right?
You've got a new project? It is. Yeah, we just released a movie. It's a documentary.
It's called I Am Hope, Scott McIntyre's Inspirational Transplant Journey. Right now, the only place you can see I Am Hope is on Pure Flix. It's kind of like Netflix. It's like it's Pure Flix.com and you can sign up for free and watch it and try out the membership and whatnot.
But we released it there first and then we'll be doing a DVD of it soon and some other things. But we caught it all on film, me going through the journey with my wife and meeting my donor for the first time. This anonymous person that gave up herself, we got it. We had a camera person there to capture our first moments together and then surprise ending my wife and I actually have a baby.
And so it was boiler alert. Spoiler alert. But he would not be here. Christian would not be here without that gift of life and it's amazing to see how my donor not only saved my life, but she allowed us to create a new life as well.
One of the float riders was rateful heart recipient and former NFL Cincinnati Bengals coach Sam White. Coach Sam shared his story and injected a little humor during the brunch and I was excited to have the opportunity to talk with him afterwards. I am a heart transplant recipient 15 months ago. I was really close to the end.
Dr. Sidney Hall made arrangements to send me home and let hospice quote take care of me for as long as necessary twice. And I wouldn't let him do it. And I hung around long enough until heart came in and it was found.
It literally at the last moment. I'm hearing now that my time left on the planet earth was less than I realized. They didn't want to tell me the absolute truth. But I'm getting close again on finding out exactly how close it was.
But it was close. But I got out of his hand on my shoulder. I tell you and he provided great doctors, an airplane that was fast on the planet that was good and retrieved that heart. I don't know my donor family or the donor himself whether it was a, in fact I don't know if there's a man or woman.
I don't know where or what he did. But one day I hope to and that's their call, the donor family's call. Have you written them? I've written them three times.
They've written me back once and they said that they would, you know, they would one day hope to feel like they could come and meet me and be comfortable. But right now they're not ready. They're just still grieving. Sam's comments about his donor's family made me reflect on all the ways time could be a gift.
For Sam, it was obviously an extension of life, more time with his family and loved ones, and in much better health than he had been before his transplant. The time is also a gift to those grieving. A donor mother once told me, you never stop missing your loved home. But with time, the pain's off.
So maybe in time, the family of Sam's donor will want to meet him and celebrate the gift of that special connection many recipients share with their donor's family. I know meeting the recipients has really helped both Jen and Julie in their grief journey. But on this New Year's morning, the only time that matters is parade time. They're both counting down the minutes until the whole world gets to see their sons on the donate life rose parade float.
So we left the hotel early that morning and walked to the grandstands. It was about a mile away and we were amazed to see how many people looked up they had camped out all night just to get a good spot for the parade. Our float organizers purchased a block of tickets and two sets of grandstands across from each other. In addition to all the work they put into the float and all the events leading up to the parade, they make sure the floor graph families and the families of the riders and the walkers are on the same side as their loved one.
They really do think of everything when they put this together. So once we were seated, the waiting began. Someone in our group decided we should let everyone else on the parade ride know who we were with our very own cheer. Then about a half hour before the parade started, we received word that our float had won the theme award and our sections of the grandstands exploded into applause and even some tears.
I was sitting next to Julie and she was pointing out some of the families around us that she'd met at different events. I had met the couple behind us. They were the parents of Major Benjamin Muir, better known as Chex. Chex was an Air Force fighter pilot who did his flight training at Columbus Air Force Base and was there at the same time, Kelly was stationed there as a firefighter.
And now both men were being recognized for another act of heroism. Talk about a small world. His parents helped get permission for Chex's fighter plane and another one from his squad to flank a stealth bomber to signify the start of the parade. The plane on the left represented all the donors who had given the gift of life.
While the plane on the right symbolized all those who had received the gift of life. There was barely a dry eye in our section after they flew over. And that was just the beginning of the parade. We sat back and tried to enjoy the parade.
Every so often one of us would double check the float lineup in the program to see how many more floats to we would see ours. And then we had a little scare when the UPS float, which some of us had helped work on, had a mechanical problem, and almost hit our grandstand. They had to get a tow truck to move it and our donor families were starting to get worried because the bands and the floats were going around the UPS float and it would have completely blocked our view. Julie had me laughing through the tensions and things like, they don't want to see this cage in mama go crazy if she can't see her baby.
Thankfully they managed to get it moved a few floats before ours. And then it was here. I asked Julie what it was like for her right after the float passed. I was not prepared for the visual of him actually being in the parade.
It was completely amazing. Breath taking, heart stopping. It was something that I just can't describe. Jen also had a hard time putting the experience into words.
It was amazing. I just really, I don't even know how to put it into words. It was breathtaking. My phone was blowing up already right before I came because they showed it on TV back home.
And so my phone was blowing up and just that in itself just made me tear up because I'm thinking, oh my gosh, my baby was on TV and the whole nation just saw him. The world just saw him. So then when it got to me, I just didn't have words. I mean, I was shaking, I was crying and I'm just so proud.
It's really an overwhelming feeling but it's such a happy good feeling inside because I'm just so proud. I found myself reflecting about the floats theme long after the parade was over. My parents are getting older and starting to have some health issues of their own. I realized what a gift my time is with them and how sometimes we take those moments with our loved ones for granted.
These women reminded me to relish that time and I'm so grateful to the families for sharing this experience with me. We've reached the hero segment of the get to life podcast and as we do in every episode, we honor a hero. But today it is a special episode. We want to honor 44 heroes and these 44 heroes were featured during the Rose Parade, which is what we're featuring on the gift of life today.
We want you to get to know those 44 people who saved and enhanced lives through the gift of organized and tissue donation. How do you do that? It's pretty simple. You can go to DonateLifeLote.org or on Facebook at DonateLifeLote.
There you can read details of the lives of those 44 four-graph honorees. Let's pause and say thank you to all those who give the gift of life. Wow, right? A pretty powerful episode.
Thank you to Kirsten Heines and Troy Perez of the gift of life for bringing these stories to us. It's amazing and incredible. I love that theme, the gift of time. It means so much to so many.
Not a chance to watch the two families that we featured before during and after the Rose Parade. Through social media, texts, phone calls, they're so proud of these heroes. I could feel it. I was proud as well.
You can experience more at lope.org or donatelifeloat.org. There's much more to be seen to be read, to be discovered. Check that out. And I think we all want to say thank you to our partners from across the country, especially those in California.
They work so hard every year to make the Rose Parade so special for not only our families from Louisiana for all of these families. And you got to love that. That's a good partnership there. Now, we hope we inspired you and we hope that you go out and do something today that you don't normally do to help us make life happen because we know you can do it.
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