Blood Bank of Delmarva (BBD) is very appreciative of the donors who have started off the new year by donating blood and helping their local community in a tremendous way.

That includes Dan Van Thuyne, brother of BBD Medical Technologist Kelsey Van Thuyne. Dan, who was on winter break from Penn State University, promised Kelsey to he would donate after Christmas. The mechanical engineering major did so on Thursday, January 2 with three of his LaSalle College High School buddies, who are sophomores in college.

“I like to come here during winter break as part of my blood rotation,” Dan said. “I always loved donating.”

Thomas Eble, an engineering major at Pittsburgh University, donated for the first time since high school.

“Dan’s a very convincing person,” Eble said.

Also coming were Elio, a liberal arts major at St. John’s College in Maryland, and Steven Porreca, a sophomore at Pittsburgh U.

University of Delaware students Zoe Rawheiser and Spencer Toth had the same idea, as these young ladies both donated during their winter break at Blood Bank of Delmarva in late December. 

“So, I’ve donated before. And Spencer wanted to donate, so I asked her to come with me,” Rawheiser said. “This is the second time we’ve come together.”

Among other donors, Brianna Robinson and Calvin Thomas donated on January 2, and they illustrated that it’s perfectly normal for visually impaired people to donate blood. They took the DART Paratransit bus to BBD from Newport.

“We’re both visually impaired and I think it’s relatively easy to donate,” Robinson said. “Having someone sit with us and read the [screening] material is helpful.

“I’ve been donating for quite a few years now,” she added. “I just graduated from Delaware Tech, and he just started at Del Tech. They had a blood drive a few months ago, and I got him to donate [for the first time] that day.”

This was Robinson’s second donation, on January 2. “I loved it,” he said.

A few days later, on Monday, January 6, BBD experienced its first snow day of the winter season, and it was a doozy. On a day, BBD would normally see more than 200 donors, a grand total of eight donors were able to make it to the only facility open that day, the Christiana Donor Center.

One of them was Ricky Duong, who lives nearby.

“It was pretty easy; I just drove slowly,” Duong said. “I had open heart surgery. So, when I had surgery, I got blood donations. I’m just giving it back, basically.”

Last but not least, also coming in during the critical, winter period was BBD’s top, whole blood donor, Joel Plaut, who donated his B positive blood in the Concord Donor Center, Delaware State Auditor Lydia York, and Miss Relay for LIfe Brielle Everson. York donated her O negative blood in Christiana on Monday, January 13, and Everson donated her O positive blood in Christiana on Tuesday, January 14 after hearing about the devastating impact of the snowstorm’s effect on the blood supply. 

“I did see that, and it made my heart just ache,” Everson said.

All of these donations, as well as the donations in the coming weeks, will help BBD recover from the snowstorm and help stabilize the local bloody supply.