A nationally renowned chemist, a Baltimore City clerical worker and several babies were among the 549 Marylanders memorialized Monday for donating their bodies to science in the past year.
“He believed in supporting the medical field,” said Doreen Bitman, of Silver Spring, the widow of Joel Bitman, a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist whose research helped persuade Congress to ban the pesticide DDT.
Bitman, 80, died in March but decided in 1969 to donate his body to advance medical education, said his daughter, Judy Pearson, who also attended the outdoor memorial service at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville.
It was “very fitting,” she said, to have medical students study her father, who served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Nick Kessides, a student at University of Maryland School of Medicine, was among the dozens of future doctors who attended the service.
“We wanted to show respect to the families because their loved ones taught us,” he said.
As more people learn of the state?s anatomical-gift program, more sign up, said Ronn Wade, director of the Anatomy Board of Maryland.
About 70,000 living donors have enrolled, he said.
About 35 percent of the 549 people who were used as surgical or clinical cadavers for medical and dental students this year fell into the state?s custody after they went unclaimed, Wade said.
After they are used for study, the bodies are cremated, with about half of their families requesting the ashes. The remaining are buried at veterans? cemeteries or in Springfield.
“Many of them are children of the Depression, who … want to serve the greater good,” Wade said.
James Amrhein, an 85-year-old warehouse clerical worker from Baltimore, was one of them.
“My parents felt it was the most useful thing to do,” said his son, Stephen Amrhein. “Why waste money on a casket when they can be useful to someone?”
James Amrhein?s widow, Constance, also plans to donate her body.
“I can help someone learn instead of burying a body I?m not going to use,” she said.
