KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? People who donated their bodies to the Kansas University Medical Center were honored with a service coordinated by students who say the donations will help them be better doctors.

About 200 family members of donors attended “The Gift of Life” service Tuesday at the medical center.

One of them was Eileen Byquist. The body of her husband, Jack, was donated to the medical center last year after he died of cancer. His goal, she said, was to help someone after his death.

“This was the only thing we could think of,” said Byquist, of Salina.

The service was similar to those conducted annually at the University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kansas City, but a first at the KU medical campus.

The service included a slideshow of students studying, laughing and listening in class. A group of students sang and families were given tulip bulbs.

About a dozen medical students organized the service to pay homage to the donors, let the families know how much students learn through human dissection, and connect students to the families.

“I wanted there to be more acknowledgment of the spirituality that goes along with anatomy,” said Mayra Sanchez, a second-year student who conceived the memorial service idea.

KU’s medical school accepts about 175 students every year, and first-year students are required to take gross anatomy, which includes the dissection of a human body. That course teaches students the body’s geography and organ functions.

George Enders, course director of the anatomy program, said the center used about 30 bodies every year for dissection and that thousands of people already had committed to donating their remains.

“The gift of a body is indispensable in educating students in the practice of medicine,” Louis Wetzel, a professor of anatomy and cell biology, said during the service.

Wetzel said a doctor might treat 15,000 patients during a 30-year practice and perhaps save 600 lives. The ability to do that, Wetzel said, comes from the knowledge of human anatomy gained in that year of dissecting a cadaver.

Jim Fredrickson of Topeka came with his wife, Annabel, to remember his mother, Clarice, who died in July. He said some family members were uncomfortable with Clarice Fredrickson’s choice to donate her body, but he said Tuesday’s service reinforced his support.

“Today has made me very happy,” he said.