AUGUSTA, Ga. — Students at the Medical College of Georgia gathered Friday in Augusta, Georgia, to thank people they never met but say taught them more than almost anyone: the donors whose bodies made their anatomy classes possible.
The service took place on Augusta University’s Health Sciences campus, inside the Natalie and Lansing B. Lee Auditorium. Medical students sat alongside relatives and friends of the donors, and students handed flowers to the families during the service.
Nine students spoke, representing several programs and mostly drawn from the Class of 2029. Speakers included students from the dental college, the Augusta University and UGA medical partnership, and the university’s physical therapy program.
Their remarks circled the same ideas. Working with real human bodies, they said, showed them what the profession they are entering really demands, and it kept them aware that each donor had a full life and people who loved them. One dental student said the class never treated the work as simply learning structures, because each one belonged to a person whose life mattered. Another speaker thanked families for supporting a loved one’s choice to donate while grieving at the same time.
Two students read poems during the program, and the hospital system’s spiritual care director at Wellstar MCG offered an invocation blessing the donors’ cremated remains. The names of the honored donors were read as part of the service.
Body donations through the college’s program let students in anatomy study the human body directly. Organizers said the gifts help train future doctors, nurses and other health care workers and push medical research forward.
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