1960 – 1980’s

Aspen has always prided itself on its medical facilities and practitioners.  Due to the town’s remoteness to major medical facilities it had to get creative on how it treated its patients.  With no storage facilities or methods to extract, catalog and maintain an adequate supply of blood, they resorted to the method of a Walking Blood Bank. 

A Walking Blood Bank was nothing more than a list of the locals willing to donate on a moment’s notice.  The list included all of the contact information, blood types and other important facts like the last time a donation was made.  From there the participants went on living life as usual. 

On numerous occasions I remember the phone ringing late at night followed by the sound of my father getting dressed and heading out the back door.  On some of those times I know he had been out with friends earlier in the evening and certainly must have still be feeling the effect, none-the-less, the hospital was glad to get his donation.  My father has a rarer blood-type and when they called him it was because someone needed exactly what he had.  

My father used to talk of how these calls were really a social event in themselves.  When blood was needed the hospital staff called everyone who was available, assuming they had not given blood recently, and the emergency room soon filled up with friends and family all there to do their part.  I never once heard the name of a recipient; I supposed that really did not matter as long as they got what they needed. 

I am sure that the Aspen Valley Hospital did not invent this walking storage method but it sure served their purpose until the technology caught up with the demand and other methods of getting blood to where it was needed were developed.  Just about the time I was old enough to go on the list, the system was abandoned.

 Life in a small town, never a dull moment.