As he did before the transplant, Smith works as a senior analyst at Lincoln Financial in Concord. 

Smith currently moderates an organ transplant support group at Concord Regional Hospital. The group, which meets the fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m. at the hospital, is for people who are pre- and post-transplant as well as their loved ones.

Smith said he encourages people to become an organ donors. 

"Doctors can do so much these days and age is not an issue. Anyone can donate," Smith said. 

Tim Rice, husband of Patty Rice who works at the hospital in marketing, had suffered from Type I diabetes since the age of 2, until he received a pancreas transplant four years ago.

In 1996, Rice received a kidney donated by his sister; however, his diabetes continued to worsen until his doctor suggested a pancreas transplant.

After the pancreas transplant, Rice's diabetes went away. 

Because Rice suffered from a disease that affects insulin production and blood sugar levels in the body — things that can affect every major organ in the body — since he was a toddler, he did not know there was a another way to live. He said that, after the transplant, he kept wanting to check his blood sugar levels, as he always had to in the past, and he continued to eschewed high-carb foods that are forbidden to most diabetics.

"I'm still kind of adjusting," Rice said. "Every day is a new experience for me."

Jane Bergeron of Laconia received a double lung transplant on Oct. 31, 2003. 

A sufferer of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease since 1983, by 1993, Bergeron was on oxygen 24 hours a day. In 2000, she was placed on the organ transplant list, at first for a single lung. 

She was then diagnosed with a secondary lung disease, Bronchiectasias, which increased her priority and made her eligible for a double lung transplant because the disease in one lung would have affected the healthy, transplanted lung.

Bergeron said there were three possible matches between 2000 and 2003; however, each pair were ultimately deemed unsuitable because of infection, damage or other reasons.

A fourth pair of lungs was found to be compatible and healthy enough to replace the diseased lungs. 

Like Smith, Bergeron experienced dramatic improvement in her quality of life after the transplant. Before, when she was oxygen all the time, Bergeron said she still felt like she was "breathing through a straw."

"I was able to maintain my job, but I couldn't go to the grocery store by myself or run errands or do housework," said Bergeron, who works in the advertising and sales department of the "Weirs Times."

She said her employer was very understanding about her health and helped her maintain health insurance so she could afford the lung transplant. 

Since the transplant, Bergeron said, she no longer needs oxygen and she felt she had tons of energy.

She said she has no major health issues, though she remains on a regimen of 18 prescriptions that help her body accept the foreign lungs.

Bergeron has been a volunteer for the New England Organ Bank for the past 10 years and attends a transplant survivors' support group in Boston, Mass., she said. 

After the flag-raising, she said she always actively promotes the Organ Bank's mission, which is to talk about the great and constant need for donors.

"I'm trying to get the word out about how important it is for people to sign those licenses, sign the registry and let family members know about their decision," Bergeron said. 

For more information on organ donation, visit www.donatelifenewengland.org.