Kristina Tufts remembers walking into an anatomy lab for the first time, seeing the shrouded cadavers on the gurneys and feeling a little bit dizzy.

"What helped me was when it was explained that these people had all chosen to be here," said Tufts, 26, speaking Thursday in front of her fellow Samuel Merritt University students.

Students at the more than 100-year-old Oakland health sciences school gathered Thursday for an unusual event: the school's first memorial for donated bodies.

"These people are here because they wanted to advance our learning and make an impact on the world, even after they passed," Tufts said at the noontime memorial held on a lawn.

The donated bodies used in Samuel Merritt's anatomy classes come from UCSF's Willed Body Program, which supplies cadavers for about 50 schools, research groups and emergency medical education programs in Northern California.

After the coursework is complete and the bodies are no longer needed, they are returned to UCSF for cremation and to be buried at sea.

UCSF has been holding memorials to honor the donations by its students in the various schools, including medical, dental, nursing pharmacy and physical therapy. The next memorial will be held early next month.

Samuel Merritt decided to hold the memorial for the first time to allow students to speak publicly if they wish or to privately write a note of appreciation to their donor. Later, the school plans to plant a tree as a "living memorial" to honor the dead.

"In the conversations I've had with students, many have had profound experiences in feeling connected with the donors, and they wanted to honor that relationship," said Craig Elliott, Samuel Merritt's assistant vice president of enrollment and student services.

The school receives 37 bodies a year from the UCSF program, and the students know very little about the donors except their ages and presumed cause of death.

Monica DeLeon, 24, who's in the occupational therapy graduate program, said she worked with one patient, a woman, who was described as having "chronic pain."

But when they examined the body, they learned she had cancer in her bones that was never diagnosed. "I feel like that validated her pain," she said.

For Kris Meadows, the most profound experience was working with the cadaver's hand for the first time. "Suddenly it was so real," said Meadows, 32, another graduate student in occupational therapy. "You're holding someone's hand."

The students said their most memorable donor of the semester was a man they nicknamed Muscle Man due to his well-developed physique. They said they were able to learn more about the body's muscles because he was much younger, at 54, than most of the donors, and it was clear he worked out. The man had committed suicide.

Tufts said she honors the gift these people chose to donate. "It's like they give me X-ray vision," she said. "Their body is what I see when I'm trying to work out a functional problem in a patient.

"Even after death, everyone has a story," Tufts said. "And their stories are still being told."
