Vincent resident Ben Burns discusses his father’s commitment to being an organ donor and what the gift he was able to give meant to him during a National Donate Life Month event Thursday at WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

PARKERSBURG — Robert Burns believed in being an organ donor and emphasized its importance to his son, Ben.

But it wasn’t until more than a year after his father’s passing that the significance of the decision became clear to Ben Burns.

The Vincent resident received a letter in April 2019 from a woman in Texas who had been in an accident that resulted in torn tendons in her knee. The single mother of a 6-year-old girl received tissue and muscle from his father, allowing her to recover.

“That’s when it hit me,” Ben Burns said Thursday at a WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center marking April as National Donate Life Month.

Burns, a father of a 6-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy at that point, said he’d been so focused on losing his father that he hadn’t thought about what organ donation really meant. But now, he’s liable to bring it up if he hears someone is heading to the DMV to renew their license.

WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center CEO Sean Smith welcomes staff and guests to a National Donate Life Month event Thursday in the hospital cafeteria. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

“If they ask why, I tell ’em the story,” he said.

Burns spoke at the event in the Camden Clark cafeteria Thursday morning with hospital officials and representatives of Lifeline of Ohio, an independent, nonprofit organ procurement organization that serves 38 counties in Ohio and two in West Virginia, Wood and Hancock counties.

Brenda Hooper, intensive care unit clinical nurse manager at Camden Clark and the hospital’s organ donation liaison, said 10 lives were saved at the hospital via organ donation in 2024. There were six donated kidneys, two livers, two hearts, two lungs and one pancreas.

“It’s one of the most profound gifts we can give, that transcends all boundaries and … saves lives,” Hooper said.

In Lifeline’s service area in 2024, there were 169 organ donors and 608 lives saved, said Andrew Mullins, CEO for the organization. In addition, there were 549 donors of tissue – including bone, skin, tendons, ligaments and heart valves – and 568 cornea donors. There were also 737 placenta donors, with that tissue able to be used in skin grafts to treat burns or wounds that don’t properly heal, he said.

Lifeline of Ohio CEO Andrew Mullins speaks during an event celebrating and promoting organ donation Thursday in the WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center cafeteria. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

The annual event usually includes the raising of a Donate Life flag in front of the hospital, but cold, wet weather pushed that to a later date.

Mullins said the flag symbolizes life, loss, healing and hope and flies for those who have donated, the family members that supported their decision and those still waiting for a lifesaving or life-changing transplant.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.