{"id":215671,"date":"2025-05-12T14:01:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T00:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=215671"},"modified":"2025-05-12T14:01:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T00:01:58","slug":"willed-body-program-memorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/05\/12\/willed-body-program-memorial\/","title":{"rendered":"¶«¾«Ó°Òµ<\/abbr> med school\u2019s silent teachers honored for their final act of giving"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
\"willed
Family and friends honor their loved ones at the Annual Memorial Service.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jed Davis and his family gathered at the University of Hawaiʻi<\/span> at M\u0101noa\u2019s John A. Burns School of Medicine <\/a>(JABSOM<\/abbr>) to honor two loved ones who donated their bodies to science nearly 20 years ago. <\/p>\n

They were among the attendees of JABSOM<\/abbr>\u2019s Willed Body Program<\/a> Annual Memorial Service on April 26\u2014the first held in person since the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"two<\/p>\n

“When we arrived, the students came up and were talking to us. That was cool. We didn’t expect that, it was really nice,” said Davis. <\/p>\n

He initially thought the students had known his late grandfather in life but later realized they had only known him after he had passed. <\/p>\n

“It caught us off guard in a good way, but they approached us like they knew him and were telling stories about him,” he said. “It was a nice, humanizing touch to something like this.”<\/p>\n

Davis\u2019 grandfather, Army Air Forces Col. Edward Jurkens, was a WWII<\/abbr> veteran who devoted his retirement to volunteering, including at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum. <\/p>\n

“He just was always about giving, and giving as much as he could to other people. So to have a program like this where he could give after life was a clear fit,” Davis said.<\/p>\n

His aunt Barbara, Jurkens\u2019 daughter, shared a similar spirit. “She was very involved with the Humane Society… it was a given basically,” Davis added.<\/p>\n

A ceremony of gratitude<\/h2>\n

The Willed Body Program trains future physicians while honoring donors who make that education possible. For program director Steven Labrash, the memorial is a deeply meaningful event.<\/p>\n

“In the 30 plus years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never had an in-person memorial service where anybody wasn’t happy that they participated in it,” Labrash said. “It gives [families] an opportunity to see firsthand the appreciation the students feel and realize the reverence and the pono that they put into the service.”<\/p>\n

\"canoe<\/p>\n

Medical students and faculty shared heartfelt tributes, including \u02bbImi Ho\u02bb\u014dla student Regan Stradtmann-Carvalho. “They have not only touched our lives but will have touched the lives of all the patients we may one day work with and heal,” she said.<\/p>\n

The service included hula performed by medical students and concluded with a scattering of cremains off Magic Island Beach Park, as families offered final goodbyes and the Celtic Pipes and Drums of Hawaiʻi<\/span> played.<\/p>\n

“I think there\u2019s probably no better choice you could make as you\u2019re passing away… there\u2019s no better program to honor that choice,” Davis said.<\/p>\n

Read more at JABSOM<\/abbr>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JABSOM<\/abbr> medical students paddle out to scatter cremains off Magic Island, honoring anatomical donors and their families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[31,9],"class_list":["post-215671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-john-a-burns-school-of-medicine","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215671"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215716,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215671\/revisions\/215716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}