Word: gilliland
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What had started as a happy family get-together had become a nightmare of death and injury. But thanks to Mrs. Gilliland's clear thinking and firmness of purpose, five people who never knew the Gillilands had sight restored to their blind eyes...
Family Planning. Mrs. Gilliland was called from her home to one hospital to learn that her son was dead, then to another hospital to learn that her husband and a daughter were dead. At the second hospital, the widowed and triply bereaved mother was eventually allowed to see her battered surviving children. Nancy, 9, had (among other injuries) a deep gash over her eye. Says Mrs. Gilliland: "I noticed that her eyelid was cut, and I wondered whether there was an eye under that lid. Then I remembered our plan...
...Gilliland family plan had been made 18 months earlier, after hearing Dr. John H. Galbreath, pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church, preach about corneal transplants as a way "to live on usefully after death." Willard Gilliland, a solid, civic-minded man (he was safety and security director for Aluminum Co. of America) talked it over with his wife and elder children. They agreed to donate their corneas to the Eye Bank of Pittsburgh...
...when Nancy's injured eye reminded Mrs. Gilliland of their pact, eleven hours had passed since the accident. Was it too late? June Gilliland sent her mother to phone the Pittsburgh Eye Bank from the hospital lobby. There was another call to the undertaker. Within 20 minutes, an eye bank officer arrived with forms for Mrs. Gilliland to sign. In another half-hour, the corneas were removed...
...three Gilliland children surviving, Beth, 10, is still in a toes-to-shoulders cast. Nancy will go back to school next month, but in a wheelchair. Ellen, 4, has recovered well from a fracture of the pelvis, and will start kindergarten. Remembering the members of her family whom she has lost, and thinking of the sight restored to the cornea recipients, June Gilliland says simply: "Isn't it a wonderful living memorial...