Blair's gift worth sharing

Maybe you didn't know Timothy Blair Willison, the young Coeur d'Alene man who died recently from injuries sustained in a car crash.

But at just 24 years old, Blair, as his family called him, left a tremendous legacy. He'll live on for many years to come because he had the foresight and the generosity of spirit to donate his organs to people in need of them.

Thinking about death isn't likely the first thing you wanted to do today, but we beg you, consider doing what Blair did. Rather than wait for driver's license renewal or another time that might be more convenient, take five minutes now. Go to www.organdonor.gov and sign up.

In just a few seconds you'll learn that your gift can save up to eight lives and help many others through tissue donation. On the flipside, thousands of Americans die each year because the organ transplant they desperately need does not arrive.

When you go to the organdonor.gov website, in the upper right corner is a place to select Idaho as the state of your registration. The site is extremely easy to use; we found it takes 5 minutes or less to provide the necessary information.

If you believe as we do, that preparing to do as much good as you can after this lifetime is over, then become a registered donor. You might be able to help others even if you're not eligible to donate blood.

Particularly in the wake of alarming National Security Agency information-sharing revelations, we're confident that the donor registry will do everything in its power to protect your information - they won't sell, share or otherwise compromise your information in any way. We conducted an online search of instances where that information might have been compromised, and discovered only one such case in the U.S. - a mistake in Florida in 2008 that might have compromised donor information from some 55,000 Floridians.

When you consider that more than 1 million Americans are registered organ donors, we think the odds of your personal information being compromised are acceptable. The upside certainly is worth that risk, and much, much more.