A 70-year-old Ohio man made a flying visit last week to Michigan Community Blood Centers in Grand Rapids to roll up his sleeve for the fourth of an intended 50 special blood donations. Al Whit-ney’s goal is to donate platelets in every US state. A resident of Avon Lake, Ohio (about 20 miles west of Cleveland), Mr. Whitney already has given blood in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. As he travels from state to state, he hopes to help raise awareness about apheresis donation while saving some lives at the same time. “I’ve actually donated in Australia, too, but ob-viously that doesn’t count toward the 50-states plan,” he said. A blood donor since the mid-1960s, Mr. Whitney has given more than 5 gallons of wholeblood, plus about 550 platelet donations. He also has helped organize mobile blood drives in conjunction with his local community blood bank, LifeShare Community Blood Services. “A lot of people don’t know what plateletpheresis is, or why it matters,” Mr. Whitney said. “They aren’t aware of all the people who need platelet transfusions while they’re being treated for cancer. Or they might have heard the terms ‘blood components’ or ‘platelets’ but they don’t know what they mean or where they come from.”