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Pictured above a few years ago when my band gigged at Casino SSM.
Jeff McCourt ( left) McNeice (middle) Billy RIP ( right)

I gotta tell you such a heart- warming story I learned form a lovely lady in a foot cast yesterday while I was having a flipping good time on location at the new A & W on Great Northern Rd .This lady came to me at the Country Cruiser and asked if I would get her in touch with the right people in order to chat about a very important topic. That topic..Organ donation!! U bet , I said
“Call our Sales Manager Derek Patterson and we should be able to do a story on this very important issue!’

I then talked about my friend Rich Griffin in Sudbury, a close friend and radio morning guy who passed away suddenly leaving a beautiful wife, Nancy and daughter , Zoe.
Guess what? This women knew all about Rich’s story and the gifts he left so that others would live on!
She knew how the numbers of donors would increase, drastically, due to Rich’s act of amazing kindness.

I asked her if this cause had anything to do with her personally.
She said,’yes, yes it does, as a matter of fact.’
My husband is a double lung recipient as of last year.”
I nearly crumbled on the grass by the station vehicle.
This was amazing to me. It gave me more hope than ever.
It made me realize how important is it to sign your donor card and let your family know your wishes.

The ‘hair- on- the- arm -standing -straight -up’ , part of the story gets even better folks.
The woman looked seriously toward me and told me of their plight…their life-changing issues.
She said, my husband was on life support for 6 weeks.
They asked me, ‘Do you want to pull the plug?’
She refused…she knew her husband was still with her in that hospital room.
Then the call came…the call all patients and their families wait for…the most exciting thing in the World for them, thanks to guys like Rich Griffin.
The facts continued form her mouth and I became even more astonished as I was so ‘out of the loop’.
She and her husband were just beginning a long fight.
They also had to shut down their lives and leave this community to LIVE in Toronto.
She had no job and there would be no funds to help her and her husband out.
She told me some families wait years to return to home after transplant.
I said, ‘ I can’t even fathom that.’ Bravo for you,a blessing’, I said to her.!’

You see, this happened to me before when I was supporting the Kidney Foundation and I was doing a radiothon in a dialysis chair and a man walked in at 6am to the Mall where I sat and said to me….
‘U R sitting in that chair for ME. I’m Mike and I am on dialysis…in that chair 4 times a week. I live in that chair…’
“OMG you do?’
This man became an instant friend…a face to the important cause. Mike too, would go on to receive that life- changing phone call from London, ‘We have a dono .We have a kidney!!!’
Mike has since passed but he lead a great long life without the need for dialysis needles,tied to that chair….He lost a ton of weight.He visited me often on remotes and I cherished his beautiful friendship.

SO you see, yesterday this woman relayed this story…Story of utmost importance.She put a face and name to this cause.
Organ donation!!!”

I am so blessed to be able to meet the public…Hear their stories…Put faces to the causes… We really are truly blessed.

And folks, if you ever thought that the Rich Griffin story was fading,you are so wrong!..
Rich is living on inside recipients..in family homes….the story will never die!

Now in the words of my two best male friends that passed with the last year and a half..Billy and Mike..would smile and we’d head for the stage and they would chuckle and say to me, ‘ Look what we get to do!!!!!!”
Now, ‘let’s have some fun!’