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I'm Fred Noe. I'm Jim Beam's great-grandson. I'm the master distiller at the James B. Beam Distilling Company. My father, Booker Noe, was the master distiller before me. My son, Freddie Noe, he's following in my footsteps and going to be the eighth generation of Beams to carry on this family tradition that goes back 225 years of making the world's number one bourbon right here in the state of Kentucky.
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Following in my father's footsteps, as I did in work, I followed in his footsteps as far as health goes too. He developed diabetes, had kidney issues, and that's what was his demise. Well, as I got a little older, I developed a little blood sugar issue and a little type 2 diabetes, and I started trying to work on it, but it took over. And I didn't treat it as aggressively as I should have. I did more than my father did, but I got to the point to where my kidney function started declining some.
I first met Fred about, I want to say, end of 2019, about November, maybe. He was referred by the Nephrology Associates of Kentuckiana. They are a group, a nephrology group we work with closely out of Louisville, a great group of partners that we work with. And one of his physicians who's been taking care of him for years ultimately referred him to us as he approached the need for dialysis and needing a transplant.
I ended up doing dialysis, but I went through the program with the UK folks in Louisville there at the Audubon Hospital. I met Dr. Shah. He was one of the first doctors I met.
And I was just randomly assigned to the Louisville clinic that week, and so I was there. And interestingly, I'm a big bourbon guy myself. And so when I saw his name on my list of patients for the day, I'm just did a double take. Like, is this the Frederick Noe? And I'm like, no. There's got to be somebody else. So I walk into the clinic room when he was waiting, and sure enough, he's wearing a Beam jacket, and I'm like, this is that guy. And it was really cool because he's a great guy. He's a wonderful human being. So that's how we first met him.
And I said, well, you're not going to give a kidney to a guy 64 years old. Oh, you got plenty of life left in you. I'm going to do some tests, and we'll see if you're a good candidate. So I went through the barrage of tests, meeting with them periodically and doing blood work, urine work. And still, my kidney function was declining.
And I do talk to every patient, whether it's Fred Noe, John Doe, or Jane Doe exactly the same way because patients are patients. They're part of my extended family, if you will. I feel like it's the right thing to do to talk to them just like I would want someone to talk to me about my own family member or myself, as an example. So I tend to talk to them more at length about the risks and benefits of transplantation. I ask everybody that comes in for a kidney transplant if they can tell me why they want a kidney transplant, just to gauge what their knowledge base is going into a transplant.
And the ultimate answer, what I always tell patients, is there's two main reasons to get a kidney transplant, and one is to improve survival. People live longer with the kidney transplant. And number two is to improve their quality of life. Get off of dialysis. And I always tell every single patient, dialysis is a great thing. Before dialysis, patients just died from kidney failure. What I tell patients is that dialysis is a great bridge to a transplant if they qualify for a transplant procedure.
And we were looking for a possible candidate. Well, family, there was really no-- because I only have one son. And my wife, they weren't real crazy about my wife doing it because who was going to take care of me? If my wife gave me a kidney, was going to take care of both of us? So it was a-- they steered us away from that possibility.
Our head of HR, she used to be PR, Paula Erickson, she called me one day and said, Fred, would you consider us opening up your search for a kidney to the company? So what Paula did was she opened it up just to the state of Kentucky first. We've got a plant in Boston, Kentucky, the Booker Noe plant, we got our Clermont plant, and then we've got our Frankfort, Kentucky plant. So those three plants, she just sent out a blanket email to all the employees, explained my situation, that the diabetes had set in, and I was going to have to-- looking for a kidney.
My name's Deeann Hogan. I've been with James B. Beam Distilling for 26 years. I'm plant support coordinator, so pretty much jack of all trades. You name it, I've been there, I've done that, and I'll try to do it anyway. Once I heard, I had thought about donating a kidney before to a previous friend of ours from Jim Beam. She had needed one. During the time, my sister was going through breast cancer, and she said, Deeann, please don't do that right now. Said,
