Hollywood Community Gathers to Place Dedication Roses on Donate Life Rose Parade Float to Highlight the Power of Organ and Tissue Donation

Four members of the Hollywood community gathered at Fiesta Floats in Irwindale yesterday to place “Dedication Roses” on the Donate Life Rose Parade Float that will travel down Colorado Blvd. on New Year’s Day. The roses, and the float itself, are the centerpiece of a national effort to reach a broad audience with the important message that organ, eye and tissue donation saves and heals lives.

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Actor Terrence Terrell from the television program BPositive and Amy Holden Jones, co-creator and executive producer of the hit FOX medical drama The Resident, place roses on the Donate Life Rose Parade Float to help call attention to the simple yet powerful message that organ, tissue and eye donation helps save lives. (Photo: Business Wire)

Celebrating its 19^th year as part of the Tournament of Roses Parade, the 2022 Donate Life float, entitled “Courage to Hope” will carry 19 transplant recipients who will ride on the float and five living donors who will walk alongside the float on the parade route. It will also honor, through floral portraits, 35 deceased donors who donated the gift of life upon their passing.

In support of that effort, Donate Life Hollywood (DLH) invited Hollywood writers, producers and actors with a connection to donation to place a rose on the float on behalf of donors, recipients, dialysis patients and transplant candidates. Throughout the year Donate Life Hollywood serves as a liaison between the organ donation community and the entertainment industry and works to encourage more authentic and empowering stories on this important topic. It is an initiative of the OneLegacy Foundation, which serves as lead sponsor for the Donate Life float.

Those from Hollywood who placed roses on the float are:

• Amy Holden Jones – co-creator and executive producer of the hit FOX medical drama, The Resident. An editor, writer and director, Amy was the screenwriter of Mystic Pizza and Indecent Proposal, as well as the television show, Black Box. She dedicated a rose to Nicolette “Nic” Nevin, a recently departed main character on The Resident, who was played by actress Emily VanCamp.
• Shannon Powers and Dan Snook - creators of the non-scripted streaming series Last Chance Transplant on Discovery Plus. The show is filmed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. While there Shannon and Dan met members of the elite organ transplant teams and the patients who need life-saving operations. They placed two roses, one for all who are waiting for a transplant and one for the medical team at Vanderbilt Transplant Center.
• Terrence Terrell – actor who has appeared on numerous programs including BPositive, Batwoman, Black-ish, Room 104, and Criminal Minds. Terrence played a dialysis patient on BPositive and placed a dedicated rose on behalf of dialysis patients everywhere, including his grandmother and best friend in high school who were both on dialysis.

The Donate Life Rose Dedication Garden was founded by Laurie Wolowic Wright as a way to honor her brother Mike who became an organ, eye and tissue donor when he passed away in 2002 while Laurie was working in production on the film Runaway Jury (Laurie has also worked on numerous documentaries including Katy Perry: Part of Me and Five Came Back). Laurie approached OneLegacy with the idea of creating the Garden and worked with Donate Life Hollywood Founder Tenaya Wallace to turn that vision into a reality. The first Rose Dedication Garden was on the 2006 Donate Life float and now thousands of roses honoring donors, recipients and donation heroes are part of the Donate Life Float every year and give families all over the world a way to share in this annual tradition.

The Donate Life Rose Parade float is produced by OneLegacy and is made possible thanks to dozens of sponsoring donation, transplant, healthcare, and family care organizations and individuals who help make donation and transplantation possible across the country. The float inspires viewers to help the over one million people worldwide in need of organ, eye or tissue transplants each year. Register today to become an organ, eye or tissue donor by visiting DonateLife.net.

About OneLegacy

OneLegacy is the nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives through organ, eye and tissue donation in seven counties in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern. It serves more than 200 hospitals, 10 transplant centers, a diverse population of 20 million donors and families across the region and waiting recipients across the country. Becoming an eye, organ or tissue donor is easy and can be done by registering online at donateLIFEcalifornia.org/OneLegacy or by “checking YES” at your local DMV. For more information, visit OneLegacy.org

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