COLUMBUS — Thanks to volunteers like Sarah Purpus 11,000 scarlet and gray pinwheels fill the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s front plaza.

What You Need To Know

  • April is National Donate Life Month

  • Each year the medical system plants pinwheels to honor transplant donors

  • Volunteers planted 11,000 scarlet and gray pinwheels on the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s front plaza

  • In 2020, the OSU Comprehensive Transplant Center completed 599 transplants

April is National Donate Life Month and each year the medical system plants pinwheels to honor transplant donors. 

“Donors and donor families, they’re just as important in that process,” Purpus said. “So for me to be out here to show my thanks to them, it’s really important.”

Purpus is a staff nurse at the Rhodes Hall Transplant Unit and she’s a first-time pinwheel planter. She said there is more significance to the pinwheels than just their buckeye colors.

“Each pinwheel has eight different spikes on it with the one stem, so it shows that each donor can save eight lives through organ donation,” she said.

In 2020, the OSU Comprehensive Transplant Center completed 599 transplants.

The pinwheels bring awareness to transplant donation, Purpus said.

“People come out and they see all the pinwheels and they wonder why they’re out here. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about organ donations, so even just to get that conversation started,” she said.

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