A Message From Our Chairs

Mary and I are delighted to announce this year’s Heart Ball theme. “Life is the Greatest Show on Earth!” This is a great opportunity to throw an awesome party for an even greater cause. We both love a party, but helping an extraordinary organization that has helped us personally makes it especially significant. It is special because people who we love are still with us because of people like you and the American Heart Association.

While playing with his grandchildren, my father began to feel like an elephant was sitting on his chest and that he could not get enough air. Like so many, he was in denial. He was slim, never smoked or drank, and exercised vigorously most of his life. Nonetheless, he needed a triple-bi-pass due to over 99% blockage in the left anterior descending and other coronary arteries. Mary’s father had a problem of a different nature. He collapsed in the pulpit of his church with ventricular fibrillation due to ventricular hypertrophy and was without a pulse and not breathing.

We are grateful to a number of people most of whom are strangers to us and many of them are people like you. If it were not for the countless people who have stood behind American Heart there may not have been a bystander trained to do CPR on Mary’s dad. There may not have been the most advanced medical equipment and drugs on board the ambulance that took him to the hospital, much less an excellent cardiologist there to save his life. The procedures that opened my father’s coronary arteries may never have been developed, and we may have lost them both. Because of other people my dad is still helping troubled teenagers and Mary’s dad is still ministering to those in need.

Countless lives have been touched by the American Heart Association in various ways. Every day lives are saved and the quality of life is improved through your giving. We are excited about you joining us for this spectacular event that is sure to exceed your expectations. This celebration of life is your opportunity to interact with other people of action who believe, like you, that helping others is a calling that cannot be ignored!

Mary and David Lord
Co-Chairs, 2012 Shoals Heart Ball