10-4 Magazine - For Today's Trucker

Trucking Icon Stan Holtzman
Faces New Challenge

For years, Stan Holtzman has been documenting the history of trucking through his photographs, books and magazine articles. He has given most of his life to the trucking industry, but now he’s looking for someone out there who can give something to him. Since he was a young boy back in the 1950s, Stan has snapped thousands of pictures – many of which have been featured in his books and in his article in this magazine (What Ever Happened To). Stan has struggled all his life to make photographing trucks a lucrative career, but today he is fighting his toughest hardship yet – his health. A near-death accident back in 1964 left him with only one good kidney and last year he came down with Vasculitis – a rare blood disease – that caused this remaining kidney to malfunction. As a result, Stan now needs to be on dialysis three times a week. This ordeal is especially hard for Stan, as he watched his wife of 30 years die in front of him while on dialysis two years ago. Currently, Stan is on a long waiting list for a new kidney. The list is probably longer than Stan’s body can wait. This is where maybe you can help. If we can find a suitable donor, Stan can get the kidney he needs without any waiting. The only criteria to meet are that would-be donors be in good health, non-smoking and have A+ (positive) blood type. Having consulted with St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles (where they do about 30 kidney transplants a month) in regards to this matter, they wanted to be sure that we made it very clear that there is no compensation to the donor – the kidney is given “with no strings attached” (it is illegal to solicit organs and pay the donor). It is not an easy surgery and recovery can be several weeks, but if you match the criteria and find it in your heart to help, Stan will be forever grateful – and the trucking community will continue to benefit from Stan’s work and memories. We know it’s a stab in the dark and a lot to ask, but we’re asking anyway. Can and will you help? If you think you might be a good candidate and would like to find out more about how you could help, please contact us at 10-4 by calling 1-888-440-4104. Stan is a walking encyclopedia of trucking’s past, and we’d like to see him “up and walking” for many more years to come.