Blood center celebrates National Blood Donor Month
Posted On: Monday, Jan. 25 2010 05:33 AM
By Alicia Lacy
Killeen Daily HeraldThe donors are the ones who help keep the supply stocked and the program running.
Thursday, in conjunction with National Blood Donor Month, Fort Hood's Robertson Blood Center donors were honored for their contribution.
Adding to this year's Armed Services Blood Program's theme "The Power of Blood," the center titled the ceremony, "The Power of Blood Donors."
Several individuals and organizations, military and civilian, which continue to support the center through frequent donations, were honored.
In 2009, the center collected 13,000 units, Lt. Col. Dennis Dombrowski said.
"The bottom line is that without our great donors, there is no blood program," the center's director, Dombrowski, said in a release.
"We try to leverage the national publicity to how important it is that everybody give blood – that can, and recognize the people and organizations that give their support," said Perry Jefferies, the center's blood donor recruiter.
For attendees to understand how their donations help the deployed soldiers, oral surgeon Dr. Charles Clark, who treated Saddam Hussein after his capture, told his story of what he observed as the chief of the Army's head and neck surgical team in Iraq.
Clark gave attendees a glimpse of how their donations and contributions to the blood center helped those serving in the military.
In the detailed presentation with graphic photos of injured soldiers and other injured people, Clark highlighted the importance of blood donors in order to save lives.
Clark said he witnessed countless head and limb injuries to soldiers due to the lack of protection or armor on the head, neck and limbs.
"We were using a lot of blood products for these injuries," he said.
Comrades would come with that injured soldier and donate to make sure they could save their injured comrade, he said.
The man who helped open the first blood bank at Fort Hood, retired Col. Tony Polk, spoke shortly on the history of the center.
"It's having an idea of what can be and getting it done," Polk said, after recounting the process it took for a blood donor center to be established at the post.
From humble beginnings in a bright green facility in the mid-1970s, the blood center has grown and now operates out of "one of the most modern blood collection and testing facilities in the nation," the center's Web site states.
Contact Alicia Lacy at
alacy@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7559. Follow her on Twitter at KDHfeatures.