UMMC raises flag for Donate Life Month

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Two years ago, Katherine Badders‘ daughter Susannah died in a car crash. But she lives on in the three lives that were able to continue through the use of her organs, Katherine Badders told a crowd of doctors, nurses and transplant recipients gathered in Baltimore on Tuesday afternoon.

“It would have been easy for me to crawl into a hole somewhere inside and continuously weep for a future lost,” she said. “But now, as I celebrate her 19 years on this earth, I also celebrate the lives that she blessed and recognize these lives as part of our healing as a family. … A gift of life to others equally sacred in this universe and I am grateful for having been part of this thread of love that survives and flourishes.”

Badders spoke at the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Living Legacy Foundation of Maryland’s flag-raising ceremony to commemorate Donate Life Month.

Badders and Ralph Davis, who received a heart transplant in 2007, raised the Donate Life flag just outside the university’s School of Medicine building, on the busy downtown intersection of Lombard and Greene Streets.

Advocates, donors and recipients hope to raise awareness this month to encourage others to consider donating their organs and the organs of loved ones.

“Sometimes we minimize the flags that we see as we drive by various buildings,” said Dr. Rolf Barth, the interim head of the division of transplantation at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “Maybe when we look up at this flag, instead of just thinking about another event, we really think about what team that flag is representing in terms of our transplant team.”

At the University of Maryland, more than 8,700 patients have received transplants, while more than 2,000 people are still waiting for a donation, Barth said.

“None of us really expect to die and give organs, but we check the box because it’s the right thing to do,” Davis said. “What my donor family didn’t know was that they had given me the most incredible gift.”

Davis’s donor allowed him to watch his sons graduate from college, watch them get married and see the birth of his grandchildren.

“In short, my angel, my hero, my donor gave me life,” Davis said. “Because of this I’m here today to full-throatedly support organ donation.”

Donors and donor families are normally kept anonymous. They don’t interact and don’t get to know each other, their identities protected by federal law. 

But despite donations nearly a decade apart, as Davis left the podium, Badders got up from her seat and embraced him as though she was hugging one of the three people alive because of her daughter’s donation.