CULLMAN – The annual Cullman County vs. City Blood Drive is coming up this Friday June 8 and this year’s event will feature door prizes, free food for participants and more. LifeSouth will have donation centers set up in four locations across town. To contribute to Cullman City’s total, donors can go to Dick’s Sporting Goods, located at the Cullman Shopping Center, or Wal-Mart on Alabama Highway 157. To donate for the Cullman County team, donors should visit Wal-Mart on Olive Street or the Cullman County Courthouse. All stations will open Friday morning at 8 and will shut down at 5 Friday evening.
“We would like to invite everyone to come out and support the City of Cullman in the City vs. County Blood Drive this Friday June 8, 2018 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” said Kim Puckett with the City of Cullman. “Carissa with LifeSouth has informed me this morning (Wednesday) that our community has unfortunately gone into emergency need for all blood types.”
Co-chair of the event, Ashley Graves, broke down some of the giveaways and prizes that will be available at this year’s blood drive and how participants can win
“We’re very grateful that the Cullman County Cattlemen and Cattlewomen’s Association has agreed to do steak sandwiches again this year so anybody that donates blood will get a free cattlemen steak sandwich. The County is actually going to be giving away a Gatlinburg trip courtesy of Lindberg Protein.* How that will work is when you give blood there will be kind of like a door prize slip for you to fill out and we’ll put all those in a drawing and choose a winner so that’s kind of our big thing we’re doing this year,” Graves said.
“This will actually be our third year that both the City and County have partnered with LifeSouth. Previously, we worked with Red Cross but these past three years we’ve worked with LifeSouth and one of the cool things they did for us this year is they actually made a specialized T-shirt just for this blood drive. It’s kind of like a grey color with red, white and blue and on the front, it says, ‘Cullman Blood Donor’ and on the back it’s got ‘City vs. County 2018’ so that’s pretty neat that they were able to do that for us.”
The competition between the City and the County is a friendly one with no trophies or bragging rights. The event is put on exclusively to help people in need within the community.
“Last year we were able to help 324 patients, because with LifeSouth, all of their donations are used locally and so it helps directly help people in our community,” said Graves. “Last year it actually ended in a tie so that was unique but our goal this year again is for both the City and the County to get 100 units each. We would love to get even more, but that’s the goal.”
This is Graves’ fourth year to help run the event and she’s excited each year to see community members come out and support each other, especially in the times of greatest need.
“It’s just amazing. Right after the tornado (2011) was a year that we really saw a lot of people come out. 2009 actually was the biggest year; the City had 122 units and the County got 107, but in 2011 the County actually got to 119 units by itself, so like I said it’s just very gratifying to see all the people that come out and just knowing that what they’re doing is going to help save lives in our county. It’s really a great feeling,” Graves smiled.
*All donors who give, whether at the City or County sites, will receive a free steak sandwich. Only donors who give at the County locations will have the chance to win the trip to Gatlinburg.
Copyright 2018 Humble Roots, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
