This blood drive is unlike any other blood drive - it’s the national record holder! For more than a decade, the Gift-of-LIfe Marathon broke progressively larger local and regional records, including the New England record held by Boston in the mid 2010s. Little ‘ol Rutland broke the national one-day record of 1,968 pints in 2013, just before Christmas, collecting 2,350 pints! It took a huge effort involving 300 Red Cross staff and 200 volunteers, and thousands of hours of planning, marketing and public outreach, but the record still stands! To get a glimpse of the energy that lead to the record, search online for “The Blood in This Town,” a documentary by Art Jones, which was produced a few years earlier when Rutland attempted to collect 1,000 pints in a day. Today, the GOLM has smaller goals each December, but it’s been joined by a July Mini Marathon, which also collects hundreds of vitally needed blood each year.
