Georgia Magazine - January 2020 - 42

Hometown HERO

By Amber Lanier Nagle

Meredith Forrester
Shooting survivor now a Red Cross advocate

Georgia Magazine

January 2020

What you should know
* There is a 90 percent chance that you will need
blood in your lifetime.

* There is a constant need for blood of all types.
* One pint of blood can help up to three people.
* Donating blood is easy, is relatively painless and
takes less than an hour.

* To find a Red Cross blood donation center in
Georgia, visit bit.ly/gchap.

AMBER LANIER NAGLE

he events of the Atlanta day trader shootings on
July 29, 1999, are forever etched in Meredith
Forrester's memory.
"I was seven weeks into my first real job, sitting at my
desk studying for a securities licensing exam," Forrester
recalls. "He walked by me and didn't acknowledge me. I
didn't see anything alarming. Soon after, I heard popping
sounds from the back of the office."
Gunman Mark Barton's shooting spree killed 13
people and wounded 13. One of his hollow-point bullets
blasted into Forrester's back, damaging her spine, intestine
and pancreas and shredding a major vein of her heart.
Doctors at Northside Hospital gave her a one in 1,000
chance of surviving.
"They pumped 115 pints of blood into me during
two emergency surgeries," she says. "For perspective, the
human body holds between 10 and 12 pints of blood."
Against all odds, she survived and started down a long
road to recovery. Today, Forrester is a SunTrust executive;
a wife and a mother to daughters Brooke and Arden. She
is also a tireless advocate for the American Red Cross, the
nation's largest blood-collection organization.
"I think about [the shooting] a lot, and I feel such
gratitude for the treatment I received and for my life," she
says. "If the shooting had been two days earlier, I would
have died because there had been a blood shortage, and
there wouldn't have been enough blood at the hospital to
have saved me. My mission is to educate the public on the
importance of blood donations and help collect as much
blood for the Red Cross as I can."
Along with donating blood often, she's an active board
member of the Metropolitan Atlanta Chapter of the
American Red Cross and has chaired the board of the
American Red Cross Southern Region Blood Services
group. She serves as SunTrust's Corporate Champion on
the Red Cross LifeBoard, a group of corporate supporters in the Southern Region that hold between five
and eight blood drives a year. In 2018, the Red Cross
January is
unveiled its Meredith Forrester Chairman's Award,
National Blood
an annual honor bestowed upon outstanding blood
Donor Month.
drive coordinators in metro Atlanta.
Meredith Forrester's story is one of triumph,
gratitude and giving back.
"Live each day of your life to the fullest," she says.
"Take care of others, and most of all, give blood! Blood
donations matter."
Amber Lanier Nagle is a freelance writer living in
Adairsville.

http://www.bit.ly/gchap

Georgia Magazine - January 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - January 2020