Blood Drive to Be Held for Former Rosedale Fire Chief

The volunteer firefighter community is coming together to help a former Penn Hills fire chief who has leukemia.

After having flu-like symptoms, an otherwise healthy Lee Hendershot, 58, was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. Hendershot, the former Rosedale VFD fire chief, currently is receiving aggressive treatments of chemotherapy and numerous transfusions of blood and platelets at UPMC Shadyside.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is cancer that starts inside bone marrow, the soft tissue inside bones that helps form blood cells. The cancer grows from cells that would normally turn into white blood cells. Some patients with AML require a bone marrow transplant.

The Penn Hills VFD is sponsoring a special blood drive on Saturday, April 7 , from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Rosedale Volunteer Fire Department, 5806 Verona Road in Penn Hills. The fire station is near the /Penn Hills border.

The blood drive will help replenish the community blood supply from which Hendershot is using. This drive also gives people the opportunity to join Be The Match, the national registry for bone marrow donors. Joining is easy-simply complete additional paperwork and submit a sample mouth swab. 

Hendershot and his wife, Carol, live in Penn Hills. They have two sons, Chris—a paramedic for and a volunteer fire fighter in Penn Hills—and Greg—a career firefighter in Virginia. 

Hendershot owned and operated Bernie's Flower Shop in Mt. Lebanon until December 2011. He served as a volunteer firefighter since 1974. 

Central Blood Bank is a nonprofit organization that supplies blood products and transfusion related services to approximately 40 hospitals in western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia and eastern Ohio.

To donate blood at this drive, please schedule an appointment by logging on to www.centralbloodbank.org using sponsor code ZRTN0920 or by contacting Chris Hendershot at 412-720-7176. Anyone donating blood must bring an ID the day of the blood drive.