Memphian Erskine Gillespie will be honored this weekend in Hollywood for his film on the importance of African-American organ donation.  

Because of problems with diabetes and high blood pressure, African Americans are often in need of an organ transplant.

“Overall, there are 100,000 people in the U.S. who need an organ transplant.  The majority of those are minorities.  Each day, 18 people die waiting for an organ transplant; 15 of them are African American,” said Gillespie, who works as community outreach coordinator for Mid-South Transplant Foundation.  

Gillespie, who will be recognized June 12 at the Donate Life Film Festival for his film “Never Shall Forget,” received a liver transplant in 1995.

His film has already won a 2008 VOX Award from the Memphis Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and was part of a presentation he gave at the national meeting of the American Society of Multicultural Health and Transplant Professionals (ASMHTP) last year.

Gillespie wrote the film in collaboration with Emmy-winning producer Chris Franklin of CB Video & Design and videographer Monroe Ballard of Optimum Studios.  He said he wrote the film to encourage pastors to take the message of organ donation to their members.  

In circulation for one year, the film has already made a huge difference. The organ donation registry (www.tndonorregistry.org) in Tennessee has grown from two African Americans in April 2008 to 40,000 in March 2009.  

The film is successfully reaching out to the African American community because, Gillespie says, it turns what most African Americans think of as a negative into a positive.

He is not, however, satisfied with 40,000 in the database because he says there are a potential 500,000 people who could be in the donor registry.  So, 40,000 is less than 10 percent of the eligible black population in West Tennessee.

A former FedEx employee, Gillespie was youth pastor at Pearly Gates Baptist Church making a difference for young people when his liver began to fail.  

Although he took his intermittent symptoms of being overly tired – too tired to get out of bed for months – to doctors on three different occasions over a period of three years, it was not until he went into crisis in November 1995 that doctors discovered the cause – Hepatitis B. They gave him seven days to live.

Gillespie said he had made up his mind not to sign up for organ donation.  However, on the sixth day, he received a call from Nancy O’Keefe of Mid-South Transplant Foundation that changed his life. A match had been found.

Now, 14 years later, he said his life has come full circle.

The ultimate act of charity

“We all know people with diabetes or high blood pressure and these two diseases are destroying our people,” Gillespie told the Tri-State Defender.  

“One person can save up to eight lives and can improve the life of over 50 people by being a tissue donor; and you can still have an open casket funeral.”

He said that organ donation is supported by all mainstream religions and is looked upon as the ultimate act of charity.

Gillespie said that nearly anyone can be a tissue donor but only those who are brain-dead are suitable to be an organ donor. And, due to head injury, aneurysm, stroke or a major heart attack, anyone can be a potential organ donor.  

With life uncertain, he encourages everyone to sign up to be a tissue and organ donor in the Tennessee Donor Registry (www.tndonorregistry.org). In West Tennessee, 82 percent of people needing kidney transplants are African American.  This is significant because kidney transplants require a match.

“The true fact is ethnicity doesn’t matter with most transplants like heart, liver and lungs but kidney match better from the same ethnicity,” said the organ donation crusader.  He goes on to tell the story of a man at Brown Baptist Church who found his match in the same congregation.

Erskine Gillespie is available for church and community presentations and is working on a new project – “Wanna Be A Trendsetter” – to make African Americans even more socially conscious of the need to be part of the donor registry.

(For more information on organ donation, call the Mid-South Transplant Foundation, Inc. at 901-328-4438.)