In St. Louis, September 2008, TRIO shared its national conference with the ITNS (International Transplant Nurses Society), we had 50 attending, they had 500!

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A TRIO Philadelphia member conceived of the idea (and carried it out!) to buy and distribute copies of Reg Green's popular book about transplant family stories as a thank you for all the ITNS transplant nurses there.  More than that, and this is what made it so special, Reg Green was to be their luncheon keynote speaker.  We added two items to that book gift idea to make it very special.  First, we asked, and he agreed, to autograph all of those 500 copies (took hours as he sat in our hotel room doing that!). Second, and this was an impossible task but it worked very well, we used a transplant on-line newsgroup to invite recipients, donor families and anyone else to e-mail a one page 'thank you to a transplant nurse' letter sharing their connection to transplant and expressing their gratitude for what a transplant nurse had done for them in their lives.

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In time for that St. Louis conference, we received enough letters, each message was copied onto some colorful differently designed paper, to insert one letter into the front cover of those 500 books! 

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When the time came, immediately after that author, Reg Green, had given his very moving luncheon presentation, the TRIO members were instructed to hand each nurse at their table - they were NOT to place the book on the table, it had to be hand-delivered into the hands of each nurse.  Wow!  As that TRIO Philadelphia planner explained what was being distributed with a piece of very emotionally inspiring music playing in the background, tears and hugs were everywhere around that huge room. 

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As those nurses sat down they discovered their books had been autographed by their new friend, Reg, the book's author.  Then they discovered and read the beautiful patient thank you note "To a transplant nurse" - with tears in their eyes they then noticed that this wasn't just one common note for everyone, but rather each nurse around that table seemed to have a very different colored letter!  Each note was different!  Now they wanted to read each other's letters too.

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So now we had a problem, how to let them all see each other's letters.  The answer was a new TRIO Philadelphia project, scanning and posting hundreds of those letters onto a website that would offer those thankyou letters for all (not just those in attendance) to read for years to come.  That library was moved to the TRIO national web site where you can read a few hundred of those letters even today.  Just click on the button below to learn more.