A proud legacy of service – a history of the Mid-South Regional Blood Center.

One of the first blood banks in the United States was founded in Memphis in the late 1930’s at the John Gaston Hospital. For years, blood banks existed only in hospitals, and in August 1950, Dr. Lemuel Diggs recommended that Memphis and the Mid-South would benefit from a non-profit community blood center.
Meanwhile, in late 1949, Dr. Merlin Trumbull, Director of Pathology at Baptist Hospital, visited and studied community blood banks throughout the country and proposed a similar program in Memphis. The proposal was rejected on the grounds that it would be more expensive to operate than the then existing system of hospital-drawn paid donors.

In 1954, another proposal to establish a blood center in Memphis was rejected for the same reason–it was too costly. Finally in 1962, the Committee on Blood Bank Operation of the Memphis and Shelby County Medical Society approved a Blood Assurance Program that supplemented–rather than replaced–the existing hospital-based donor collection program.

The Community Blood Plan of Memphis, Inc. was chartered February 19, 1963 as a not-for-profit corporation. The original objectives were to reduce dependence on paid donors, establish a pre-deposit blood assurance program, work toward a more even flow of donations and develop a roster of donors with rare blood types.

In 1974, the first Community Blood Plan Donor Center opened its doors at 1715 Union Avenue, just a mile and a half east of the Medical Center. It began operations with four employees and two donor chairs. During the entire year of 1974, only 1,335 donors were accepted at the donor center, with about 600 donors on mobiles. In July 1974, Dr. Eric Muirhead received a federal grant for $183,000 to establish an identifiable non-hospital based facility for the Community Blood Plan. The expansion of a true regional blood center became a reality in January 1975, when the board of directors changed the name to Mid-South Regional Blood Center. Nearly 7,000 donors were accepted in 1975; 14,600 in 1976; 17,300 in 1977 and almost 20,000 in 1978.

Ground breaking took place at 1040 Madison Avenue February 15, 1978. By 1979, the Mid-South Regional Blood Center had 45 employees, collected more than 25,000 units of blood and provided more than 40,000 transfusable products to the community.

In 1984, a new logo, “Lifeblood,” was adopted to easily identify the blood center to more than 600,000 eligible blood donors in Shelby County and clearly separate it from other facilities collecting blood in the area.