The first time I gave blood in Alaska was at a bloodmobile parked at Merrill Field. The staff was cheerful and efficient. The other donors joked and bantered, racing each other to fill their pint bags.

When I’d filled mine, I accepted a juice box and chatted while I completed the waiting period. That’s when a staffer mentioned a woman who’d given 20 gallons of blood. I stopped mid-sip, certain I’d heard wrong. “Twenty gallons?” “That’s right,” was the reply, “you do the math.”

I did. Two pints to a quart, times four quarts to a gallon, times twenty gallons was 160 pints. You can only donate approximately every two months. Assuming you donated like a Swiss watch, that was 320 months — over 26 years of clockwork bloodletting.

Who would do that? Why? What kept her going through all the punctures and drainings?

I called the Blood Bank. They wouldn’t give a name, but they knew exactly who I was asking about. At my persistence, they agreed to call “the 20-gallon lady” and ask if I could contact her. And so, I met Eva Eckmann.

She stepped into the coffee shop. At 67, Eva was slim and athletic with a quick, wry smile, and glacier blue eyes. She was straightforward and laughed easily. Eva was born and grew up in Germany but came to Alaska in 1961 when she was 26, with her husband and a 7-month-old baby. She and her husband built a business, and two other children were born and raised in The Last Frontier.

I tried but Eva wouldn’t let me glorify her story. She first donated in 1971 after a friend of hers gave and she thought, “Well, geez, I can do that.” In response to my probing, she explained, “I felt that this was something I could do to help somebody else out who needs this gift.”

I thought of 160 people walking around with Eva’s gift: young people falling in love, marrying, having kids; moms and dads going to work, playing with their kids, helping them with homework; kids celebrating birthdays and soccer wins, growing up to make discoveries; elders ripe with a fine, fermented view of the world. All that living with Eva’s blood pumping through it.

Why so many times over so many years? Eva’s no-nonsense reply: “People are very friendly; you’re pampered at the Blood Bank. I’m not scared of needles. So there was really nothing that kept me from not repeating it.” She added, “I think I also have a tendency, that once I start something, I stick with it.”

“Do you feel now like you have to go?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m racing against the clock. Because 72 years is the age cut off for donating, so I thought, ‘Well I at least can get to 25 gallons!’”

“Eva, what makes you want to go for such a goal?” I asked. Her tone became serious, “For one thing, blood donations are needed more now than even 20 years ago — because of medical advances and more illnesses.”

There must be more, I thought — all those pricks and pints and years. “Has anyone in your immediate family ever had a need for blood?”

“No,” she said.

“Then why do you care? These are strangers.”

“That’s all right. They need other people’s care just as much as your own family does.”

At the end of our conversation, I asked Eva if she had any questions for me. There was just one. “Well, are you going to be a continuous donor now?”

What could I say? “Yes.”

Because of Eva, I went back to the Blood Bank. It was like a potlatch — sharing cookies, juice, and conversations with the staff and other donors. There was a sense of community.

Some months later I called Eva to see about getting together for lunch. When I asked her how she was, she answered without embellishment, “Not too good. I was having stomach aches, and the doctors say I have pancreatic cancer.” One of Eva’s first questions for the doctors was whether that would prevent her from donating blood. It did.

The cancer spread quickly. When I called again about lunch, Eva apologized, “I would like very much to see you, but I’m afraid lunch isn’t possible. I can’t keep food down, you see.”

“Oh, Eva,” was all I could manage through my tears.

“It’s not so bad,” she said, “my family is all here. My son flew in with his family, and my daughter has been helping take care of me.”

“It must be so difficult,” I choked.

There was a short silence before Eva replied, “Yes, it is difficult. But it is all very wonderful and precious, too.”

Eva died not long after that. The church where she’d taught Sunday school for 30 years was filled to overflowing, as were all the hearts in it. I thought of how Eva found wonder and preciousness even in the last days of her life. I silently prayed I might be worthy of Eva’s too brief friendship and all her grace.

Eva ran out of time before she made her goal of 25 gallons of giving. So, when I returned to the Blood Bank, I thought, “This pint’s for you, Eva.”

January is National Blood Donor month. Go to the Anchorage Blood Bank. Tell ‘em Eva sent you. Help her make 25 gallons—because, geez, you can do that.

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