LI Woman’s Dying Wish Realized: ‘Everybody To Give Blood’

MASSAPEQUA, NY — Bridget McElroy selflessly thought of others as she was dying of cancer. While having a bad reaction to an experimental treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan, Bridget’s white blood count was “nonexistent.”

It was blood transfusions that extended her life after the 2020 diagnosis. Bridget was well enough to realize that “she was getting all this blood, even though her days were numbered,” her mother, Mary McElroy told Patch.

The younger McElroy, who had just turned 35, saw hospital roommates being denied blood and “she felt terribly guilty,” Mary said. “It was her birthday. It was the first day she could sit up and talk in almost a week and she said, ‘All I want for my birthday is for everybody to give blood.'”

She died just three months later, after being ill for two years.

As devastating as Bridget’s illness and death have been for her family and friends, she is still acting as a beacon of hope.

Turning Bridget’s wish into a call to action, Mary and her sister-in-law Monica, who grew up in Massapequa, connected with the New York Blood Center.

A blood drive location was chosen in Massapequa at Marjorie Post Park Community Center on Aug. 19.

“She would be over the moon,” Mary McElroy said. “[It’s] certainly not the way you want to wake people up to the importance of this.”

But McElroy is so impressed with the community rallying in support of her late daughter.

“Since her death, so many people have told me things they’re doing, including giving blood,” she said.

Bridget McElroy, who had been a marathoner, was always more concerned about others. One year, instead of racing individually, “she used to volunteer to run with visually impaired people.”

She would donate locks of her hair to a charity benefitting children with cancer, among her other altruistic endeavors.

“She was an army of one,” McElroy said, as her voice cracked. “But she left behind an army of hundreds.”