Help Helen raise money

Thank you so much for visiting my fundraising page!

I am running the 2023 Falmouth Road Race to raise money for New England Donor Services, whose mission is to save and heal lives through organ and tissue donation. This organization, and your consideration of support, means everything to the many people who lives depend on organ donation.

In spite of the broad success and advancements in transplant surgery, a sad fact remains:  too many family members, loved-ones, and neighbors die waiting for organ donation. Every 12 minutes another name is added to the national waiting list and an average of 22 people die each day waiting for their heart, lung, kidney, liver, or pancreas transplant. 

When the stress of daily life gets to me, I try to step back and thank the unknown donor who gave my brothers and me the most precious gift, a loving mother. When I was eighteen months old, cardiomyopathy struck my mom, Debra. The same genetic disease that took her mother and brother (the grandmother and uncle I was never privileged to know). Fifteen months later, a heart transplant saved my mother from imminent death. Against overwhelming odds and daily challenges, my Mom survived to live an amazing life of grace and wit, as an accomplished artist and world traveler who made this world a better and more beautiful place.  

The most important job to my mother was; however, raising her children with unstinting love and affection. The rules of the day never permitted My mother to know who saved her life, but she honored that saint by instilling in her three children gratitude and a commitment to helping others. Decades later, another hero (a close friend) saved Debra again with an altruistic kidney donation. It is hard to put into words how much you want to honor people who save the lives of the ones you love the most. 

Please help with whatever money you can give. No amount is too little.  And please become a donor.

Thank you with the deepest gratitude, 

Helen