Sunbury resident Debby Rice remembers her father, Denny Hile, for his faith, positive attitude and words of encouragement.

So when doctors told Hile that after receiving two triple bypass heart surgeries he was going to need a new heart, it’s not surprising he took the news in stride. Hile was placed on a waiting list for the transplant and he carried a pager for 21 months, waiting day after day for it to notify him a suitable organ donor had been found.

“He never gave up hope,” Rice recalled. “He always talked about when, not if he would get his transplant.”

Rice, now 40, and her three siblings lived on pins and needles waiting for their father’s pager to chime with good news. But the message never came.

Hile died May 1, 1997 at the age of 62.

The family’s story, unfortunately, is not that uncommon.

Every 48 hours, an Ohioan waiting for an organ transplant dies. In the last 10 years, more than 10,000 Ohioans have died waiting for a transplant.

Donate Life Ohio, a coalition of the state’s organ, eye and tissue recovery agencies, hopes Rice’s story about hefather will help save some of those lives. She and several other Ohioans will share their personal experiences as part of a campaign to encourage people to become organ donors. Starting this month, their stories about loss, hope and advocacy will be featured in TV ads, radio spots and viral videos in Delaware County and the rest of Ohio.

Their message about the importance of organ donation will be echoed by Governor Ted Strickland, Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel and Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer.

More than half of Ohio’s licensed drivers and state identification holders are registered organ and tissue donors — which Donate Life Ohio coalition agencies stress is not enough.

“Our ultimate goal is to try and get everyone to sign up to be an organ donor. Life, after all, is the ultimate gift that you can give someone,” said Rachel Lewis, spokeswoman Lifeline of Ohio, a non-profit organization that promotes organ and tissue donation in central and southeastern Ohio.

A single person has the potential to save eight lives as an organ donor and heal 50 people as a tissue donor, according to Lewis. In 2009, 284 Ohioans shared the gift of life through organ donation at the time of their death. Through their generosity, 945 individuals received a second chance at life through transplantation.

More than 3,000 Ohioans, however, are waiting for a life-saving transplant at any given time, with 78 percent needing a kidney transplant due to end-stage kidney disease, according to Lifeline of Ohio.

The goal of Donate Life Ohio’s 2010 campaign, called Green Chair, is to add 240,000 new donor registrations in Ohio by June 30, 2010. The challenge is directed from Donate Life America and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is one that has been successfully met in years past.

Becoming an organ and tissue donor is easy.

So why don’t more people become organ and tissue donors? Donate Life Ohio coalition agencies say a lot has to do with common misconceptions surrounding the topic, which the group has tried to address by stressing:

Becoming a donor does not affect the level of medical care a person will receive in the case of a medical emergency. Furthermore, doctors working to save a person’s life are separate from the medical team involved in the transplant process.

Costs related to donation are not paid for by the donor’s family. The organ/tissue recovery agencies or the transplant center pay all costs related to the donation.

All major religions support organ and tissue donation as the ultimate act of charity.

People of all ages and medical histories should consider themselves as potential donors.

Medical condition at the time of death will determine what organs and tissue can be donated.

A donor can have an open-casket funeral. Great care is taken to preserve the natural appearance of the donor following the recovery of organs, eyes or tissue.

Ohioans can become a donor by visiting donatelifeohio.org, lifelineofohio.org, calling 800-525-5667 or by saying “yes” to donation when visiting a local bureau of motor vehicles (BMV).

bbullock@delgazette.com