Media Advisory: Ohio State Transplant Center To Host 10th Annual Reunion, Pinwheel Planting

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Nearly 500 guests and volunteers will gather for the 10th annual Comprehensive Transplant Center Buckeye Pinwheel Planting and Transplant Reunion honoring former transplant patients, organ donors and living kidney donors from 10 a.m. to noon on Sunday on the front plaza of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

 

The festivities will begin with a pinwheel dedication ceremony featuring a transplant recipient and organ donor family, followed by the planting of more than 9,000 multi-colored pinwheels. Each pinwheel represents an organ transplant performed at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center since its first organ transplant, a kidney, in 1967. With eight spokes supported by one stem, the pinwheel symbolizes the power of one person to save up to eight lives through organ donation. The pinwheels will be on display throughout April, which is national Donate Life Month.

 

Reporters and videographers are invited to cover the celebration. Dr. Ken Washburn, executive director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center, will be available for interviews from 10:45 to 11:15 a.m. Brutus Buckeye will take photos with attendees from 11:15 to 11:45 a.m. Parking is available in the SAFEAUTO garage.

 

Ohio State’s Comprehensive Transplant Center, the area’s only adult transplant center and one of the country’s largest transplant programs, is celebrating 50 years of organ transplants. Doctors have performed more than 9,300 lifesaving transplants, including heart, lung, kidney, liver, kidney-pancreas and pancreas transplants. Each year, more than 350 patients receive the gift of life – a transplant at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.

###