Local Heart Recipient Will Ride 'Donate Life' Float At Rose Parade
by Molly Daly
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Hahnemann University Hospital held a sendoff celebration Monday afternoon for a 71-year-old New Jersey man who'll ride on the Donate Life float at the Rose Parade with 23 other organ recipients.
Mark Meade lived at Hahnemann for four months before a heart became available June of 2008.
Since then, he and his wife Terry have worked to honor his donor by volunteering for NJ Sharing Network and Gift of Life, speaking about the life saving value of organ donation.
"When we speak, Terry will tell everybody in the audience, 'We have the cure -- we just don't have the donors,'" Meade told KYW Newsradio.
Now, they'll help spread the message that organ donation saves lives nationwide when the Rose Parade is televised on New Year's Day, with Mark and Terry on the float representing the more than 120 million organ, eye, and tissue donors in the U.S.
"Terry calls it the icing on the cake for everything that we do. But what we do, we do because it's important for us. How could we possibly have received the gift and not told everybody about it? It just doesn't make any sense," Meade said.