In the 19th century, and for most of the 20th.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was famous around the world as a city of iron and steel manufacturing and heavy industry.

In the 1980s, however, the steel industry faltered and failed.

At the same time, the city was developing new reasons for pride and prominence.

And although some work continued at a few steel mills, new medical research and breakthroughs in health care helped transform the Steel City into what you might call the transplant town.

The story of Pittsburgh is that it's a transplant city.

It's not the Steel City anymore.

It's a health care city.

And it's all happening really right here in Oakland, in Pittsburgh.

You absolutely live and die.

Transplantation.

Your life is transplantation.

Pittsburgh also has a very strong work ethic, I believe, and I think many other people believe and, several of my told I keep citing the old Steeler motto or whatever it takes.

And that's been true with transplantation also.

We certainly have one of the best batting records in the country as far as success rate are concerned.

And because of the pioneers that have, been gathered here as far as transplantation concerned, the, availability of new drugs that we've had, the combat rejection, all those things combined and the community support have really made Pittsburgh the place to go.

Right now, Pittsburgh is rather synonymous with heart and liver transplants, I think.

I love Pittsburgh.

Believe me when Pittsburgh has done for me, it's unbelievable.

Pittsburgh's international reputation as an organ transplant center has grown primarily because of research and pioneering medical work done at this complex of hospitals between Fifth Avenue and the University of Pittsburgh Stadium in Oakland.

The buildings themselves have been described as the last Pittsburgh hospital of the irregular, romantic, high rise type.

The complex comprises several hospitals, including children's and most importantly, Presbyterian University Hospital, which Pittsburghers long ago nicknamed Presby.

When you look up Presbyterian University Hospital in the Pittsburgh phonebook under transplant surgery, there are listings for four different kinds of transplants heart, heart lung, kidney and liver.

Doctors do more transplants here than at any other hospital in the world.

Doctor Henry T Bahnson came to Pittsburgh in 1963 as both chief of the Department of Surgery at Presby and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the Pitt Medical School.

In 1968, just months after Doctor Christian Barnard's first heart transplant, Doctor Bahnson performed Pittsburgh's first heart transplant at Presby.

He remembers the excitement.

Well, it's an exciting thing.

It still is exciting, I think, to see someone without a heart, temporarily on a heart lung machine.

And then having someone else's heart put in place and then have that heart take over and, I think there'll always be, major element of excitement in it.

It was particularly exciting in 1968 that almost 20 years ago, things were not as advanced, we weren't as hardened to it.

And kidney transplants were done in much smaller numbers.

Only a few of them a year.

Now, many transplants are done every year at Presby.

They're somewhat of an everyday occurrence on the cardiac monitors.

The blue tags with the tiny hearts mean transplant patients.

Closed doors on the cardiac wing.

Also identify transplants, and everyone knows to wear a face mask when visiting a recent transplant recipient.

Hi, Doctor Bronson.

Good to see you and see you.

James White from Binghamton, New York, received a new heart just three weeks ago.

I can tell you, I don't know why you settled in Pittsburgh, but I'm glad you did.

It's a good city.

It's a great city.

Doctor Bahnson leads a team of outstanding surgeons, including cardiothoracic surgeons Doctor Bartley Griffith and Doctor Robert Hardesty.

Doctor Hardesty is somewhat of a Pittsburgh native, originally from New Brighton, PA in Beaver County.

I remember going to a national meeting with Bahnson and Griffit and we were walking over to the local hospital and, Bahnson said to us, what would you think about Starzl coming to Pittsburgh?

And of course, we were excited about that possibility.

Just beginning in transplantation, we thought his experience, particularly in immunosuppression, although he had not been active in heart transplants, would be invaluable to us.

And I'll never forget Bahnsons comment to us.

And he sort of shrugged his shoulders a little bit and said, well, I'm not so sure Pittsburgh can handle Starzl well.

Starzl.

Doctor Thomas E. Starzl in 1981 became director of transplant services at Presby and professor of surgery at Pitt's Medical School.

He came from Denver, where in 1967 he performed the world's first successful liver transplant.

When he came to Pittsburgh.

He also brought with him the experimental drug cyclosporine, which helps control the body's natural reaction of rejecting a foreign organ.

His arrival is often considered the start of what some call the Pittsburgh era.

Well, I think the Pittsburgh era had been, in place for a long time.

It's a great medical community, and we just added another ingredient to it, that's all.

But it's been a wonderful and I should say, probably underappreciated, concentration of medical expertise for a long time.

In surgery, in orthopedics, in neurosurgery, many areas of medicine and in psychiatry, just to mention a few.

So it wasn't as if there were a desert out here.

It was really a blooming oasis.

And then just another flower came along and, plop down.

That's what happened.

Dr.

Starzl came he had a very important time in the development of transplantation.

There had not been, any major progress, steps in progress in the 1970s, 1978, cyclosporine became available as research drug, investigational drug.

And Starzl had access to that.

He came in January 1981 and brought to Pittsburgh the possibility of using cyclosporine and testing it.

It turned out to be a real advance and a major step forward.

And that was at a time when successes were being obtained and transplantation of all the organs, hearts, livers, kidneys and, like Starzl Along with that brought the surgical expertise and liver transplantation that very few people in the world at that time had.

So it was all, very fortunate circumstance at that time for Pittsburgh.

And this was a time when when Presby, more than any other facility, had some maneuverability and, and so when Starzl came and transplantation began to rocket both in cardiac, kidney and liver transplant areas.

The operating theaters began to fill.

And, and all of the skilled people that we had here began to get a great deal more work.

This man, Lee Gutkind, also found work in the growing world of transplants.

A professor in the University of Pittsburgh's English department.

He's written a book titled Many Sleepless Nights about this whole incredible medical scene.

Almost everything in the world of organ transplantation, strangely enough, happens in the darkness.

The procedure, the transplant procedure itself is very long.

A heart transplant should take probably about five hours.

Liver transplants have taken as much as 18 or 20 hours.

And so when do you have O.R.

space available?

You have it available at night.

You don't have it available in the middle of the afternoon or in the morning.

It even if you start it in the middle of the afternoon, which is unusual, you go through the night.

The Pittsburgh Transplant Foundation is a federally licensed agency responsible primarily for recovering and distributing donated organs and tissues at its office in Shadyside.

Some bones for transplant are stored in a special freezer until needed.

Most organs, however, must be transplanted very soon after removal from the donor.

Brian Boznich, director of the Pittsburgh Transplant Foundation, says being in Pittsburgh makes a difference.

Pittsburghers, I think, are very giving people.

I know that our success rate with obtaining consent from families in this area is probably better than almost anywhere else in the country, surprisingly, something that a lot of people don't realize is that Pittsburgh, within one hour's flying time, we can reach over 50% of the population of the United States and Canada.

So because of that, and looking at the limiting factors that we are, must adhere to as far as organ preservation is concerned, it really makes an ideal location for for a transplant center.

The transplant Foundation arranges for the surgical team to fly wherever necessary to recover an organ.

There are a lot of times where we have to travel to a distant city, and unfortunately, we cannot rely on commercial aircraft because we have real tight parameters.

We have to work in so many of the corporations in the city will volunteer their uncommitted aircraft and crew to fly our surgical teams to wherever we're going, and bring those organs back at absolutely no cost to us, no cost to the recipients.

So I think on the whole, the community has been extremely supportive of the program.

And that's, I think one of the big reasons this minute, so successful Pittsburgh success as a transplant center has also been fostered by innovative support programs like family House, located just blocks from Presby in Oakland and complete with a shuttle bus service, this 39 bedroom double house provides transplant patients and their families with a special place to stay at a reasonable rate.

Mary Lou McLaughlin is the executive director of family House.

When we began in 1982, or when the plans for family House began, we were then as well as we know, the first adult facility in the country and the largest, we are modeled after the Ronald McDonald program, which is certainly the most successful one, the most wonderful program in the country.

Leland Holden from Shelburne, Vermont, temporarily lost his voice but received a new heart less than a month ago.

I just feel elation.

Belong.

Believe.

And I was in the hospital for about four weeks.

My wife had the privilege of staying here at family house, and I am now staying here for a week for invitation and detection back into the human race.

Staying here has been really marvelous.

I think this is a great place.

Barbara Jernigan from Newport Beach, California, has also been recuperating at family House.

Just eight weeks ago, she received two liver transplants.

I had a liver disease, primary biliary cirrhosis, one of 102 liver diseases.

There is no known cause, and there's no cure for it.

And it usually does end in transplant in order to live.

And I chose Pittsburgh because more liver transplants are done here than all the other liver transplant centers in the United States put together.

And I felt that there if there were any complications, they must have certainly seen them.

And I would be safer here.

I had, of course, done a great deal of research and reading into this, and I felt that Starzl's team was far and above the rest of the transplant teams, and this was where I wanted to be.

A lot of patients and their families would like to be in Pittsburgh, and would like to stay at family house when they get here.

I don't believe that, that a family house or all the other wonderful things that have happened that surround the health center would have happened in any place else other than Pittsburgh.

They're wonderful people, every place else.

But we have learned that from the families that have stayed with us, that that the welcome that they have received not only technically from the from the hospital side, but from the people who have opened their doors, from the nurses that follow them home at night to the doctors to call them at home, to be concerned about them, to the people that they meet in, in McDonald's, off on, on Forbes.

It's I think it is a very special place.

John Fagnelli is a plumbing inspector.

President of People's Oakland, a neighborhood organization.

And help get donations for the renovating a family house.

And this neighborhood really is proud of it.

Like I was telling you, before that, we had, the people here from Italy for transplants.

They couldn't speak a word of English, so they, they got one of our board members from People's Oakland, Flora McCauley, and she became their interpreter for as long as, the fellow was in there for the transplant.

In fact, they still correspond today.

And as you see, like I said before to the, the organization People's Oakland here and, some of the other organizations and the neighbors around here are very proud of family House, and so am I. I'm glad I had a little party that people in Pittsburgh are famous around the world for volunteering, housing, and help of all kinds to transplant families.

The San Antonio's from Green Tree have been sharing their home and have now brought four year old Catarina, pupusas and her mother to the airport.

The two of them are flying back to Texas after a checkup.

Katrina had a liver transplant two years ago and at that time the puts US family stayed with the same ponies for three and a half months.

The same ponies are part of an organization known as Those Who Wait.

And although its volunteers often wait at the airport for people coming to the hospital, the name actually refers to transplant candidates and their families who come to Pittsburgh and have to wait for an organ to be donated or wait during the operation and recovery process.

Pat Potter is one of the coordinators of Those Who wait.

Those who wait got started about five years ago.

1980 2nd July.

With a request from two flight attendants, at our church saying that they had just come back from Wyoming.

They had, father, mother, a little girl who need a liver transplant.

The father had just lost his job.

And what were they going to do when they had to come back to Pittsburgh?

Where would they live and how would they operate and all of that type of thing.

Her church, the Sharon Community Presbyterian Church, is in Moon Township near the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport.

Those who wait started here, and although its members are now a network all over the city, some of the original volunteers are still very active people like William Aber.

I'm one of the drivers, basically.

I get calls frequently from the coordinator.

They give me the name of the person that's coming in on such and such a flight.

I will make every effort to be at the gate to meet them.

Sometimes it's a little bit hard to identify them.

They give me a basic description of the person.

However, seeing 100 people deplane, you'd be surprised how many people look alike.

I'm looking for somebody with gray hair and maybe a brown suit.

There's lots of people come off with a gray hair and a brown suit.

So I have an identifying button, and sometimes they will spot me before I spot them.

They usually have pretty good luck in locating each other.

Most of them have never been here before, and they're quite surprised that the, the beauty of the city, and particularly most everybody is amazed at the city when they come out of Fort Pitt Tunnel.

Find the entire golden triangle spread out before them.

And there's many of them.

Remark about how pretty it is.

Even though when they come in at night, not having seen the city at any other time, they're surprised at how nice it is.

Because Pittsburgh has had a black mark against it for years, being labeled as a smoky city.

But few people know that we lost that a long time ago.

It really began with one host town and probably 12 volunteers.

That was back in July of 1982.

Here it is, 1987, and we probably have close to 100 host homes, a couple hundred, volunteer drivers, other people that, function in different ways with those who wait, trying to help find not only host homes, but apartment areas and, places that they may stay that are close to the hospital.

Being close to the hospital is usually very important with some help from those who wait.

Sylvia Van Dover, from Marianna, Arkansas, found a place to stay in Oakland.

She's been in Pittsburgh with her husband for several months.

Well, we arrived in Pittsburgh on Saturday, June 6th, and my husband entered the hospital for his evaluation on June 8th.

That evening, I became a part of Jane and Russ Casas family, who participated in those who wait.

And they took me in and loved me for 12 days while my husband had his evaluation.

And I'll never forget the love and concern that they had for my husband and me at that time.

After my husband's discharge on the 21st.

We rented an apartment in Pittsburgh and became part of those who were waiting for an organ.

We waited until July 21st and got the call.

And I don't know if you know or not, but you, any time you leave the telephone, you carry a beeper.

And we were nervous every time we left and had the beeper.

And the beeper never went off.

But several times we thought it day.

And in one time we were in church and it was not our call.

But anyway, we found Pittsburgh to be delightful.

Two candidates for transplants.

While the city may be delightful, not all aspects of waiting are pleasant.

There's a constant, very real life and death drama taking place.

I don't really believe that, it's possible to explain.

The situation.

I had read it all.

I could read about it, but, it's just an emotional rollercoaster.

And there's peaks and valleys and, My husband's mother said we probably should have charted the peaks and valleys, but, it's it's just something that can't be explained.

And everything has been in our favor.

While waiting, Silvia has found joy in small things like getting mail from friends back home and talking to other people in her building who are also transplant people waiting.

Sylvia has learned some of the transplant folklore.

After my husband's first, liver failed, I heard that Doctor Starz was going after my husband's second organ, and someone said it was bound to work because the father of our livers was going for the harvest.

And Oliver's.

When they say doctor starts, I'll say, take me, take me.

And I believe that.

Brian Reams lives with his wife and family in Greenville, Pennsylvania, about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh.

In early 1981, after he fought against heart disease for nine years, his doctors decided a transplant was necessary.

Very ill, he went to Pittsburgh for an evaluation to see if he could get a new heart.

And it was like, I tell people, it's like winning the lottery.

When they told me that, yes, they could do it, because I knew then there would be some hope for me.

Never in my wildest imagination dreaming that I would be able to do the things again that I hadn't been able to do for nine years.

So I came home and waited about three weeks, had the surgery, done Pittsburgh and was in the hospital about three and a half weeks, came home and mowed my lawn.

People say to me, for instance, a question that took me a long time to answer was to live a normal life.

You know, I thought about it, I thought, and and I finally came up with an answer.

And my answer is no.

But I do normal things, and that's what's important.

John, this is Brian.

I need a couple of prescriptions.

Refill this one of.

If you can get them ready for me.

And I'll be over a little later this afternoon to pick them up.

Brian takes three drugs, including cyclosporine, to prevent his body's rejection of the new heart.

And some of the side effects.

Are easily mental.

One of the nice ones for men.

Anyways, the cyclosporine is it grows hair.

So I know a couple of people thrown their toothpaste away.

And, that's been exciting for them.

The one thing that I think it's difficult for some people is it gives you a round face.

The steroids tend to do that and give you a potbelly.

You have this tremendous appetite, which a lot of people, you just can't explain it.

It's almost like an addiction.

Sometimes they eat a huge meal and you can get up from the table, turn around and eat it again.

You know, you're just so hungry.

Brian's ease of talking about his surgery and it side effects undoubtedly helped in his founding of a group called trio.

The transplant recipients International Organization.

Brian was an early recipient of the six star transplant ever in Pittsburgh, and he found out how reassuring it was to meet someone who survived the operation.

And I thought, my goodness, I know that I'm not the only person who's experiencing this.

You need to see someone who's been through this.

So the idea came up for developing a support group where people can get together, to help each other after transplant and also help people who have just been told you need a transplant and they can meet someone who's had that type of transplant, and that person can answer a lot of questions that the doctors and nurses really can't, because they haven't had that experience.

Trio has recently received a lot of attention and assistance from the Junior League of Pittsburgh, whose members have worked on several transplant related projects.

A junior league task force on trio helped the group obtain nonprofit status, and recently, this special gathering was held to sign the papers that would incorporate trio internationally.

With headquarters in Pittsburgh, Vern Murray has worked extensively with the Junior League's transplant projects.

It is envision that each city will have trio chapters or many cities, especially those initially with transplant centers.

And those initial chapters will be affiliated with either a transplant or a procurement center in that city to help them get started.

They provide, education and support for transplant recipients and their families, and, will assist them in helping with fundraising.

Also, the Junior League has also worked to make organ donor awareness a national concern.

When, the Pittsburgh League went to our annual conference in, Nashville this year in May, we introduced organ donor awareness as a resolution that was then adopted by the delegate body.

We are one of 270 junior leagues throughout North America and Europe.

And, with them incorporating this resolution and passing this resolution, they've agreed to have organ donor promote organ donor awareness programs throughout the association, and have it an integral part of their community focus.

The Junior league was also involved with Pittsburgh's KDKA TV channel two and Presbyterian University Hospital on the Second Chance Project, which included this hourlong TV documentary special showing the nation's desperate need for more organ donations.

This Pittsburgh produced program was syndicated and shown on 113 TV stations across the country.

Guess what?

We've got a kidney for you.

This show convinced more than 2.5 million Americans to call and get an organ donor card a second chance is just one example of the attention paid to transplants by the city's various mass media.

Every 12 hours, transplant surgery saves or extends a life here in Pittsburgh.

Now, that may sound unbelievable, but it's true.

Pittsburghers are well informed about transplants because of local news coverage.

It was Valentine's Day of 1984 when Pittsburghers first heard the name Stormy Jones.

She was dangerously ill, desperately in need of both a liver and a heart, she received both in a marathon transplant surgery and recovered with surprising swiftness.

Children received most of the media attention, and some, like Ronnie Distillers, become local heroes.

The seven year old Miami boy desperately needed a liver transplant, so his classmates raised more than $4,000 to help him make the trip here.

But someone stole all the money and left Ronnie and his family with little hope.

That's when President Reagan stepped in.

He donated $1,000 of his own money to Ronnie.

He even called the boy on the phone to wish him well.

After three liver transplants, Ronnie died in early 1987.

Also in early 1987, Allegheny General Hospital became Pittsburgh's newest transplant hospital, performing only kidney transplants at first, but planning for more work and heart and pancreas transplants in the future.

Doctor Dion Yem is head of transplant services.

There any problem so far this evening at Allegheny General?

Unlike at Presby, living donor transplants are performed.

This means that someone like Barbara Smith on the left here, was able to donate one of her kidneys to her sister Kathy on the right, six months after their surgeries.

Both are doing well.

Kathy Smyth's received her sister's kidney, but knows that Pittsburgh needs more organ donors desperately.

I mean, the city's doing great as far as their medical, you know, their accomplishments in that.

The one thing Pittsburgh needs to start getting people to understand now, I think, is the donor, the uniform donor cards that drive to encourage donations, all these incredible medical procedures, the general awareness, the wonderfully human attitudes, all of these things have helped make Pittsburgh the transplant town.

It's an unusual city with unexpected charms that have been able to attract and hold people like Doctor Stahl.

I just like it.

I mean, I'm very comfortable with, a city that has so little pretense and has as one of its principal charms, the fact that it never tore down all those old buildings and old stores.

So Pittsburgh is a great city.

The greatest Pittsburgh is one, two, three, four steps ahead of most other transplant centers in the United States or across the world.

If Pittsburgh can stay that way, whether it starts a remains here or not, then Pittsburgh will always be the transplant center.

Not necessarily of choice, but the transplant center that is leading the way here.

It's it's a very serious situation that my husband and all others that come to Pittsburgh, they have no choice.

They are going to die.

And this gives them the opportunity to live and have a good life.

And I might tell you that my husband say it the other day, that he felt better than he had felt in ten years.

And I think that's a beautiful ending.