Lifelines (Summer 2001) - Like Son, Like Father...?

DONORS SAVING LIVES

Like Son, Like Father...?

	Jim Sweeney

	Russell Sweeney

Parents usually try to set an example for their children by being role models for them to emulate. With Russell Sweeney and his son, Jim, it was a little different.

Russell, 75, was a lapsed blood donor until Jim convinced his retired father to take up donating blood regularly again.

“Jim had one day said, ‘I’m going to donate blood, you want to come?’” said Russell, a father of five and grandfather to eight. “And I said, ‘sure’ and that was how I got started again!”

Jim, 39, has been a blood donor since he was 17, when he used to attend St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco. “It was my chance to get out of chemistry,” he recalls jokingly.

Since Russell’s reawakening about blood donation in 1985, not only has this San Francisco native and U.C. Berkeley graduate given 20 pints of blood, but he also began apheresis donations in 1988 and has given 230 donations to date!

“I had never heard of apheresis until one day someone asked me about it while I was having coffee,” said Russell, who tries to donate at least once a month. “I said, ‘Sure, I’ll try it’ and have been doing it since.”

It’s easy to do and I wish more people
were out there to help others.
-Jim Sweeney, Blood Donor

Doing just as well in the “donations tally” is Jim, who has given 100 pints of blood! “If you’re healthy, you may as well give,” he said. “It’s easy to do and I wish more people were out there to help others.”

Russell agrees with his son on this issue. “Donating blood is a great reward and that’s the main reason why I am doing it,” he said. “I’m doing it for the kids who have leukemia, for the numbers of people who need blood.” Of his experiences at BCP, Russell said the nurses who attend to him are always conscientious and make sure he is well taken care of. However, there is one thing that he would like to see changed. “I’d like them to bring the brandy back!” laughed Russell.

Both father and son have been trying to educate their friends and family members on donating blood and have so far succeeded in getting one of Russell’s granddaughters to donate the gift of life!