Today, I’m thankful for those that teach us that it is better to give than receive.
A fatal car accident on the Main Road in Cape Town, South Africa, cut the life short of a 25-year-old successful banker and aspiring seamstress named Denise Darvall on this exact day (Dec 3) in 1967. On the day before, Denise and her mother, Myrtle, had just ventured to have afternoon tea at a friends’ home, when they decided to stop at Joseph Koppenberg’s Bakery in the Observatory section of town to purchase one of their famed caramel cakes for the afternoon soiree. Unfortunately, the driver of an automobile failed to see they had entered the crosswalk, as a massive truck obstructed his view, and he immediately struck them both at a high speed. Denise’s mother died instantly, and Denise was thrown across the street from the impactful blow of the automobile. She was urgently taken to the hospital where tests would reveal Denise sustained a massive skull fracture and multiple internal head injuries. With no functioning brain activity, the physicians sought family agreement to remove her from life support. When the two physicians approached Denise’s father Edward, who was still distraught with the loss of his beloved spouse, with this unfathomable request, his heart sunk even further. Edward felt helpless in his misery.
In that solemn conversation, the doctors indicated to Edward that there might be a way he (and Denise) could assist other ailing patients in the hospital. You see, Denise’s heart was functioning well, but that of another patient, Louis Washkansky, a 53 year-old Capetown grocer, was failing. They proposed transferring Denise’s heart to Louis in an effort to save him. In addition, they proposed transferring Denise’s kidney to a 10 year-old boy, Jonathan van Wyk. After deliberating about the decision for only 4 minutes, Edward granted his permission to transplant these organs to the waiting patients. So, on this day, Dr. Christiaan Barnard would perform the first successful heart transplant in the world. Until that time, the technique of cardiac transplantation had been successfully used on a dog at Stanford University in 1958, but it had never been attempted in humans. Having been familiar with the technique from his prior training in the United States (including over 40 similar experiments in canines), Dr. Barnard successfully made the organ transfers to the two other hospitalized patients. After the surgery, Louis Washkansky regained full consciousness and lived for 18 days with his newly functioning heart. He eventually succumbed to pneumonia, brought on by immunosuppressive agents that were required to prevent organ rejection. Jonathan would live much longer. Dr. Barnard would go on to perform similar heart transplantations over the course of his successful medical career, with many recipients living for 5+ years, until this renowned surgeon could no longer perform operations due to worsening rheumatoid arthritis in his hands.
I share this story with you today to remind you of the powerful gift of giving. Gift giving comes in many flavors. Sometimes it’s giving a piece of ourselves – our empathy, our advice, or simply our time. Sometimes, it’s about giving something even more profound, like our possessions, even our organs. Sometimes, it’s about giving financial support to those in more need than ourselves. This past Tuesday, we celebrated Giving Tuesday. Unlike Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday is not a commercial venture. Instead, it focuses on the importance of pledging donations during the holiday and end-of-year period, at a time of giving. This program has grown significantly over the last seven years to the point that it is now estimated that nearly 2.5 million gifts totaling $300 million are offered on this single day.
Giving Tuesday is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Launched in 2000, the BMGF is the largest private foundation in the US, with assets totaling over $50 billion. Operating under the mantra that “All Lives Have Equal Value,” the BMGF focuses on ensuring that all of the world’s citizens have access to quality healthcare and education. Since its inception, the foundation has endowed support to a wide range of health, socioeconomic, and education developments. Its health programs are focused on everything from basic nutrition and sanitation to malaria and tuberculosis control to the elimination of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The BMGF supports these and sundry other projects with an annual budget of about $5 billion. It provides support to the GAVI Alliance, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children Fund, PATH Global Health Organization, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Moreover, the foundation supports the Gates Cambridge Scholarships, which allow students and scholars from around the world to attend Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
interestingly, BMGF received a massive boost through the various contributions provided by the entrepreneur Warren Buffet, who donated to the foundation first in 2006 and more recently in July 2018. Although the BMGF is not without its own complexities, I would challenge anyone to claim that the world is not in a better place because of the wonderful humanitarian efforts that this foundation supports. Many children throughout the world benefit from life-saving medications and vaccines as a result of the great-hearted donations from the BMGF.
Most of us don’t have $5 billion dollars to donate to an admirable cause. Most of us also don’t have an organ, such as a heart, to give to those in need. However, we all are blessed with compassion and love, which ultimately emanates from our own heart. In this season of gift giving, the greatest gift we can give is to assist those in more need than ourselves. So, as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now (thankfully) over, let’s focus on the power of this awe-inspiring, incredible movement of giving back. If you have the ability to help others, please do so during this season of ‘paying it forward.’
Peace to all.
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