February 10, 2006

Become a donor for Valentine’s Day

By Diane Blum
Special to the Times

With Valentine’s Day approaching, I found myself thinking once again about a man known as, “The Heart Man.”

Cliff Steer, who died in 2003, was married to Jean Steer, a 3rd grade teacher at Silver Oak for many years before her retirement. Cliff, known as “The Heart Man,” used to visit schools like Silver Oak, carrying his original, diseased heart along with him in a container of formaldehyde. He would point out the very visible damage that his earlier drinking had done to his heart. He would tell kids about how he had gotten a second chance in life; how he had lived for some 18 years with a new heart received from an anonymous organ donor.

This second chance enabled Cliff to talk to hundreds of thousands of youth about them making good choices in life and about the dangers of alcohol abuse.

I will always think of Mr. Steer on Valentine’s Day, which is also National Donor Day.

I wish his donor’s family could have met Cliff and seen what wonder had come out of their unselfish act of organ donation.

More than 88,000 men, women and children currently await life-saving transplants. An average of 17 people die each day from the lack of available organs for transplant.

Take a moment and make a life-impacting choice: Become a donor. Tell your family that you’ve done so, and suggest that they, too, become donors.

You can download a donor card off of a number of donor-related websites (www.shareyourlife.org being one). Imagine how you’d feel if someone in your family needed an organ, needed that second chance in order to live. So, become a donor as a Valentine’s Day gift to a loved one. Do it because it is the right choice. Do it for “the Heart Man.”