Judy LaMusga donates blood; she has 583 lifetime blood donations and is Solvita’s second-ranked female donor and ninth-ranked donor overall. She is being inducted on Friday, Oct. 25, into the 2024 Fresenius Kabi Donation Hall of Fame.
Courtesy Photo | Solvita
DAYTON — Beavercreek attorney Judith “Judy” LaMusga is among 12 blood donors nationwide named to the 2024 Fresenius Kabi Donation Hall of Fame.
The induction ceremony will be Friday, Oct. 25, at 10 a.m. at the Solvita Dayton Center, 349 S. Main St.
LaMusga has 583 lifetime blood donations and is Solvita’s second-ranked female donor and ninth-ranked donor overall, said a Solvita press release. She represents Solvita (formerly Community Blood Center) as its 12th Hall of Fame inductee and the 10th in the last 10 years.
Solvita Blood Center nominated LaMusga in recognition of the passion, advocacy, and influence that has made her a leading ambassador for the cause of blood donations.
LaMusga has been a platelets donor since the early ’80s and averages 20 donations per year.
She gave proponent testimony on behalf of the Community Blood Center in 2018 for legislation establishing January, Ohio Blood Donor Awareness Month. This past January she joined Dayton Mayor Jeffrey Mims in kicking off Donor Month 2024 at the Solvita Dayton Center.
“I don’t care about honors or awards,” LaMusga said about her induction into the Hall of Fame, in the release. “I just want to give blood and save a life. How many lives have been saved or extended because I donated? That’s what is important to me.”
She was inspired when she began donating platelets to learn her donation was going directly to a woman fighting cancer.
“I said right then, ‘Oh my God, I’m coming back,’” she said.
She was part of a group of donors recruited to help a little boy with a terminal illness.
“We donated our platelets and managed to save his life long enough to give the family one last Christmas,” she said. “Those kinds of connections make you committed to the understanding that if you don’t give, it’s not going to be there. Someone is not going to receive it, someone could die.”
“This is just frosting on the cake,” she said about awards. “If we’re not there, we know lives are not being saved. To me, that’s the cake. All the other stuff is frosting. That’s why I donate.”
LaMusga served 35 years with the Montgomery County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities before earning a law degree and entering private practice. In 2022, the University of Dayton Law School presented LaMusga with the Francis J. Conte Special Service Award in honor of her extraordinary service to the community and the School of Law.
LaMusga was an original organizer in the former Community Blood Center’s LifeLeader recruitment program and was honored with CBC’s Award of Distinction in 1998. After her 400th donation in 2014, she was honored by the Ohio Senate and named a Dayton Dragons Community All-Star.
Solvita inductees in the Fresenius Kabi Donation Hall of Fame include Solvita’s second-ranked donor Larry Turner of Xenia (2023), the Floyd Harris, Jr. family of Dayton, top female donor Katie Ellis of Kettering, and posthumous inductee Wayne Wolfe of Brookville (2022); the Ivory family of Dayton (2021); youngest HOF inductee Theo Hale of Kettering (2019); Susan Leugers of Botkins (2017); top donor Wendell Clark of Eaton (2016); blind donor Larry Smith of Dayton (2015); John Kalaman of Centerville, co-founder of the Officer John P. Kalaman Memorial Blood Drive (2006); and first inductee John Hosier of Hagerstown, Indiana (1999).
Schedule a blood donation with Solvita (formerly Community Blood Center) on the Donor Time app, by calling 937-461-3220, or at www.donortime.com.
