On a quiet morning in April 2006, Carolyn Kramer, heart transplant recipient, stood at the "Donor Memorial Quilt" display outside the main cafeteria at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She had come to Hopkins to volunteer her time, as she does almost every year, to raise awareness about organ and tissue donation during April. But this year was the first that the quilt was on display at Hopkins and it affected Carolyn deeply.
"I was awestruck at the beauty and the sentiment involved," says Carolyn. As one of the many grateful recipients of the gift of organ donation, Carolyn’s next thought was "Why can’t we, as transplant recipients, create a quilt for our donors?"
The creation of the "Donor Memorial Quilt" (pictured right) was coordinated by the Transplant Resource Center of Maryland. |  |
 | It inspired Carolyn Kramer, Marie Rogers (shown below) and other Hopkins volunteers to plan for a transplant "Gratitude Quilt." |
Quilts have been powerful symbols of health crises, ever since the national AIDs Memorial Quilt was begun in 1987. Each panel in a memorial quilt is created to remember someone who has been affected by a health crises. The U.S. is still facing a crisis in transplantation as thousands of people are awaiting a vital organ or tissue donation.
Having been inspired by the Donor Memorial Quilt, Carolyn, together with Hopkins transplant recipient volunteers, Maureen Thornton, Rose Stelmack and Patricia Barget, began to plan a "gratitude" quilt. They quickly joined up with an expert seamstress from the community, Marie Rogers, who has generously offered to sew the quilt. Their vision is to create a quilt to demonstrate transplant recipients’ gratitude to donors. "We struggle with a way to express how grateful and respectful we are to our donors," says Carolyn, "and this quilt will be such a wonderful visual representation of our thanks to donors."
The volunteers worked with the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center to ensure that funding would be available so that any Hopkins transplant patient who wished to contribute a square to the quilt could do so. They are providing instructions on making the quilt squares to organ recipients at the annual transplant events, such as the Holiday Party, the Springtime Conference, and the Fall Picnic. In addition, they have made instructions available through all the transplant coordinators offices and on some of the in-patient transplant floors, such as Nelson 4, 5, 6 and 7.
Like the other famous memorial quilts, the transplant "Gratitude Quilt" will never be complete. Marie, the quilt seamstress, will leave one seam open to be able to add more squares. The Hopkins quilt volunteers hope to have the first sections of the quilt completed by next April, the period during the year that we celebrate national donate life month. This is when the "Donor Memorial Quilt" should be on display again at Hopkins. The quilt volunteers say that they hope to have the first squares of the transplant "Gratitude Quilt" right by its side.
If you are a Hopkins organ or tissue recipient and would like to know more about how to create a quilt square for the transplant "Gratitude Quilt" please visit www.hopkinsmedicine.org/transplant or leave a message at the Comprehensive Transplant Center Volunteer Desk at 410- 614-5622, and someone will return your call within a couple of days.
 | Volunteers, Pat Barget, Maureen Thornton, Carolyn Kramer and Rose Stelmack assemble packets of quilt materials with instructions for transplant recipients to make their own squares. |
