First face transplant recipient Connie Culp meets donor's family

Culp, a 47-year-old mother and grandmother, had her face torn off by a shotgun blast incident six years ago.

She underwent the first full face transplant surgery in the U.S. in Dec. 2008 at the Cleveland Clinic.

After undergoing longtime process which involved more than 30 medical procedures to rebuild her disfigured face, Culp showed her new face to the world with her head held high.

Culp knew little about her donor
Until this weekend Culp knew little about the donor who gave her a new face.

Two years after receiving life-changing surgery, Culp finally came to know this weekend that a Cleveland-area woman Anna Kasper provided her new face.

Anna died of a heart attack in December 2008.

Meets with the donor’s family
On Saturday, Culp met with the donor's family for the first time. She spent about 90 minutes with Anna's husband and children, who have decided to reveal she was the donor, according to the Associated Press.

"She'd give her time. She'd give her money. She gave a lot of things she didn't have to other people," Kasper's husband, Ron Kasper, told The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, according to AP. "When they asked about the donation, we knew it was what she would want to do."

From her home in southeast Ohio, Culp told The Plain Dealer that the meeting went well after some initially awkward moments.

"It was kind of awkward at first, because we didn't know what to say, but it was great. They're just really nice people," Culp said. "It's awesome, how much we have in common."

Culp has Anna’s resemblance
Anna’s 23-year-old daughter, Becky Kasper, says looking at Culp she sees a resemblance to her mother, particularly in the nose.

"I can definitely see the resemblance in the nose," she told The Plain Dealer. "I know she's smiling down on this, that she's very happy."

Immediately after Anna Kasper’s death in 2008, a donor specialist approached the Kasper family about donating her face.

Kasper's family members, who had already agreed to give away her heart, her kidney, her liver and her eyes, decided to donate her face within minutes, according to the AP report.

"I had never heard anything about a face transplant being done before but her whole life, she always said, hell, if I can't use it and someone else can, you can take it!," Becky Kasper recalled.

The mother-of-three, Anna Kasper was a registered organ donor and more than 50 people in all benefited from her organs and tissue.

"But the overriding factor was we knew it was what Anna would've wanted," the 52-year-old widower Ronald Kasper said.

Amazing similarities between the two women
After meeting with Culp this weekend, Kasper told The Plain Dealer that the two women, who were born barely 14 months apart, share much more than a face.

"Connie's like Anna in a lot of ways," Ron said, "as far as her personality and how much she enjoys life and how she smiles and is still able to have such a great attitude after everything she's been through and she takes everything in stride."

In 2004, Culp’s husband Thomas shot her in the face, tearing away her nose, upper jaw and all of her facial nerves endings. The injuries nearly left her blind as well.

Culp underwent face transplant surgery on Dec. 10, 2008 in Cleveland Clinic, and since had been through thirty surgeries just to smile and smell.