An Alden man received a pin for donating his 47th gallon of blood Tuesday.

Ebenezer Howe said he gave his first unit of blood when he was 18 years old, while attending Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.

“My folks had done it,” Howe, who is now 65, said.

Howe served in the Navy and after that lived and worked for Burroughs and later Unisys in the Twin Cities area. He continued to give blood, and once when he was giving at the Robert Street office in St. Paul, he noticed some people giving blood in another room. He asked what was going on there, and was told they were part of the apheresis program.

According to the American Red Cross Web site, in an apheresis donation, donors give only select blood components — platelets, plasma, red cells, granulocytes or a combination of these, depending on the donors’ blood type and the needs of the community. Apheresis is most commonly used to collect platelets and plasma.

Howe estimated that he regularly gave through the apheresis program from about 1993 until he moved back to Alden, where he’d grown up, in 2002.

“I’d go in at 6:45 for a platelet donation and be at work by the time I needed to be there,” Howe said. He still gives that way when he is in the St. Paul area, he said, adding he tries to get others to give that way as well.

Through the apheresis program, donors are able to give up to 24 times in one year. During the actual donation, donors sit in comfortable recliner and a carefully monitored machine draws blood from one arm through sterile tubing into a cell separator centrifuge. After the blood components have been collected, the rest of the blood is returned to the donor.

“The body can regenerate platelets and red cells pretty quickly,” Howe said. “Blood is a renewable resource.”

He said platelets are given to cancer patients who are receiving aggressive treatments as well as heart patients, since it helps blood to clot. His own mother received platelets when she had heart bypass surgery, Howe said.

Howe donated during the blood drive organized by the Alden-Conger National Honor Society on Tuesday. According to Vikki Pence, NHS adviser, 43 students tried to donate that day, with 34 first-time donors.

“I never miss an opportunity to give here,” Howe said of the Alden-Conger School, of which he is a graduate.

Cathy Stapel, a donor recruitment representative from the Red Cross St. Paul Blood Center, said she sent out a query when she heard Howe would be getting his 47-gallon pin.

“He has given the most of any donor in the region, which includes Minnesota, Wisconsin and South Dakota,” Stapel said.

Howe said a poster of a smiling child who received blood is among one of his favorite sights. “I can help give a child a smile for one more day by lying on a table and pumping out something my body can regenerate,” he said.

But he doesn’t see himself as a hero.

“What I think is a big deal is a farmer who will shut his tractor off during the planting season for an hour and a half to give blood,” Howe said. “That’s a bigger hero.”