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Warsaw residents Kris Cultice and her mother, Ruth Ann Mylin, have been selected by Sattar Jaboori, a coordinator associated with the Fort Wayne American Red Cross office, as one of nine family representatives in the nation to attend a four-day national memorial service in Washington, D.C.
Cultice's father, Don Mylin, died three months ago of a heart attack.
"It was very unexpected," Cultice said. "He had no previous heart conditions. He was only 59."
Cultice said the family received one phone call concerning her father's condition. Those four words, "he didn't make it," hit the family hard.
"You hear things like that happening all the time, but you don't ever think it will happen to you," she said.
Cultice said the family has been talking to the Red Cross through the entire ordeal.
"My brother [Rick Mylin] is involved with this too," Cultice said.
Mylin is not going on the trip with his sister and mother. But he was part of the decision to make his father a tissue donor, Cultice said.
She also said there was no preparation for this. Everything hit them fast and hard.
The family received a request from Randy Packer, the chaplain at Kosciusko Community Hospital, asking them to consider giving permission for Don to be a tissue donor.
Cultice said they told Packer yes right away.
"We never realized the magnitude, never realized what was all involved," she said.
Since Don's body was deprived of oxygen, he was not able to be an organ donor, but skin, tissue and some bone was donated, making him a tissue donor. The family also had Don's corneas donated as well.
Cultice said the day after her father died, Jaboori called the house and "a relationship was formed that very moment that we started talking to him because he was so compassionate and so helpful."
She said 25 to 30 people will benefit from her father's tissue donation. Cultice also said it's amazing "that so many people will be affected because of my dad and because we donated his tissues.
"We're doing it because the awareness needs to be out there," she said. "We have learned so much about this. We were not aware of the whole process."
Cultice said she and her mother are excited about the trip to Washington "because it's another way to learn about tissue donation."
The four-day service is sponsored by the American Red Cross Tissue Services, a not-for-profit organization. It will consist of a dinner and workshops on tissue donations and grief.
"I'm really developing a deep passion for the whole process," Cultice said.
Cultice and her mother will fly out Wednesday for the National Memorial Service. They will return the following Saturday.
