XENIA — Larry Turner made Community Blood Center history July 10 with his milestone 800th lifetime donation.

The Xenia retiree is not the first to enter the “800 Club” but he might as well have said, “Hold the door.” His donation came just two months after the 800th donation of CBC’s top donor Wendell Clark.

He is now 76 and has quietly and unassumingly kept pace with Clark by averaging one plasma and two platelet donations per month.

There are different ways he can measure the milestone. Not in donor T-shirts because he has stopped collecting them. Perhaps in breakfasts at Tudor’s Biscuit World in Xenia.

“I always stop there after I come in here,” Turner said. “Three-inch biscuits. They give you two with gravy and I can only eat one.”

He counts more dearly the friends made over the years, and the countless lives his donations have helped save.

“I just show up when I can,” Turner said. “It’s not a complication for me. I’m glad to do it and I’m glad to see more and more people doing it.”

He believes the opportunity and process of donating blood products is easier and more accessible than it has ever been.

“I’ve been doing it since ’67,” Turner said. “I was at NCR working in the factory and going to school, and they had blood drives. That started it. Then I started apheresis. That was when it was a needle in both arms, it took four hours and the nurse stayed with you the whole time. Things have really changed.”

He learned computers in college, served in the Army Reserves, retired from NCR in 2002, and worked four years in IT for CBC before retiring in 2008.

“It’s been a wonderful ride, knowing I did help people,” Turner said. “I really don’t like the limelight. I’m doing it because someone needs it.”

Make an appointment online at www.DonorTime.com, call 937-461-3220, or use the Donor Time app.