Greater Metro
Lexie’s gifts of life
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05 Dec 2012
- Written by Brian Ramoly
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After being diagnosed with epilepsy at age eight, Lexie Marissa Davis suffered seizures for more than half her life. Still, she remained happy, humble and thoughtful, always trying to find the good in people.
A student at East High School, Lexie excelled in art, sang in her church choir and enjoyed belly dancing. In August 2011, just weeks after turning 17, she suffered a seizure, fell in the tub and drowned.
Lexie's family wanted others to live as a result of the special gifts of organs and tissues from their "special Lexie." Now Lexie has been named a 2013 floragraph honoree on the Donate Life Rose Parade Float. On Thursday (Dec. 6), her family and friends will journey to East High School at 3206 Poplar Ave. to help complete the floragraph.
Eric Harris, the East High School principal, has asked the entire student body to attend and wear green – Lexie's favorite color.
Lexie's floragraph is one of only 72 floral portraits that will appear on the Donate Life float to honor the lives of organ and tissue donors and the decision they made to "give the Gift of Life by donating their organs."
More than 28,000 lives are saved each year in the U.S. through the gift of organ donation, giving hope to the more than 116,000 people awaiting a life-saving organ transplant. In addition, every year hundreds of thousands of people need donated corneas and tissue to prevent or cure blindness, heal burns or save limbs.
Thursday's event is being hosted by the Mid-South Transplant Foundation, the organ procurement organization (OPO) serving Memphis and the 150-mile radius (including parts of eastern Arkansas, northern Mississippi and western Tennessee.) It begins at 9 a.m. in the East High School gym (parking available on Walnut Grove side).
Those attending will include Lexie's mother, Yolanda Walton, her grandmother, Delois Bolden, her sister, Krista, and Holly Lunsford, Lexie's nurse at Methodist University Hospital
For additional information visit www.midsouthtransplant.org or www.donatelifefloat.org.
