When she was a child, Karen Younts Griffin would visit the home of her aunt Peggy and her late uncle Wilford Radford, who lived in Eden.
Griffin, a Madison native, was especially fond of her uncle for a number of reasons, but one thing that made him and his home stand out to her was the key rack that hung in his hallway. It was adorned with plastic stick pins.
Radford was an avid blood donor and the American Red Cross gave pins – each shaped like a drop of blood – to donors every time they gave.
Radford had more pins stuck to his key rack than a young Griffin could begin to count, she said.
More importantly, her uncle passed along a message to his niece about what each drop meant.
“He told me, ‘Sick and hurt people need blood to live,’ ” Younts said. “It was a simple explanation, but it meant so much to me.”
Griffin soon began following in her uncle’s footsteps, making her first blood donation when she was 18. She’s now 62 and made her most recent donation just last week.
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