H&S scene;

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"How's your blood?"
Every outfit can use a self-starter—the kind who takes initiative and inspires people around him to join in a common effort. In the Boston Office of H&S, senior accountant Stanley Finer is that kind of initiative-taker. Thanks to his push at just the right moment, all of our 160 Boston and Merrimack Valley people and their immediate families now have the security of an office blood bank from which they can draw in case of need in accident or illness.
It all started last April when partner Norman Jones, age 62, was seriously injured in an automobile accident. He required blood on a massive scale.
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Del Edens, partner in charge of the Boston Office, spread the word that blood donors were needed for Mr. Jones. As Stan Finer recalled the events some months later:
"When I heard about the need for blood I asked Mr. Edens if it would be all right with him if we were to round up all the tax department people who were willing and able to give blood, and go to the Massachusetts General Hospital that same day, at 3 p.m. He approved right away. Within two days we got thirty people from the Boston Office, and not just from the tax staff, to Mass General to donate blood.
"I remember that when anyone showed up in the staff room we'd greet him with, 'How's your blood?' Then we'd explain what was going on and see if we could recruit him."
Stan said that in H&S, just as among all other groups in the country, "some people felt hesitant at first. Maybe they were afraid of being turned down even though they had never even tried to donate blood." But when the need came close to home, as in this case, the spirit of a group effort overcame hesitations.
Most of the Boston Office did not know it at the time of Norman Jones' accident, but there had been a need for blood donation earlier in the year when Del Edens had been in the hospital. On that occasion his blood requirements, which were not large, were met by a few partners and principals. But the emergency in April was on such a scale that it set Stan Finer to thinking: Why not start a permanent blood program for the entire office?
With a go-ahead from Del Edens, Stan conferred with the Boston chapter of the American National Red Cross on the right way to proceed. By the end of June a questionnaire had been sent