Donna Appell, R.N., chair of ATS PAR, and her daughter, Ashley, accepted the ATS Research Program’s first-ever Breathing for Life Award on behalf of ATS PARs 15 member organizations.
Although both Carmen and I got shots of this, I think the official photo is sharper than ours.
This was one of the big moments of the show for Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome. Donna has served as the President of PAR, the public arm of the ATS, for the past two years. PAR, as an organization under her leadership, received the first ever Breathing for Life award. In Donna's typical fashion, her personality charmed the crowd. She and Ashley had written a poem about lung disease researchers that Ashley read at the podium of this huge, important dinner with more than 600 attendees. Everyone was completely charmed. The rest of the show people were stopping Ashley to meet "the girl they heard about that read the poem at the research dinner." This photo made the front page of the show daily.
But, Donna and Ashley weren't finished charming the pants off everyone in the room. ATS premiered the ATS Research Foundation film - a film to help raise money for lung disease research. Not only did Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome get four mentions in the film (I was counting), but Ashley was filmed singing as her mom talked about how when Ashley sings, her mom thinks about her lungs and how much needs to be done so that Ashley can keep singing. The funny thing, according to Ashley, was that she wasn't singing seriously. She was just messing around while she was waiting on the camera guy, and he caught it on film.
Well, serious or not, it had the room in tears.
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