CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM
One of six butterflies released from a box stayed with Sophie Collis, 5, during a donor recognition ceremony hosted by the Organ Donor Center of Hawaii on Saturday. Collis received a liver transplant when she was almost a year old. "She's doing fantastic," said her mother, Katie Kingsley.
Organ recipients hail
the gift of lifeJust one donor, who drowned
in Hawaii in 2002, was able
to help almost 70 people
During a Hawaii vacation in 2002, Oklahoma resident Kathleen Kinney told her sister she was so happy and loved the islands so much that she wanted to stay.
Kinney, 37, drowned the next day, July 24, while floating with sea turtles off Waianae during a charter boat excursion with her family.
"Her wish came true," her sister, Beth Minor, of Edmond, Okla., said Saturday.
Laura Kinney, Kathleen's sister from Houston, said Kathleen made it clear many times that she wanted to be an organ donor, and her family honored her decision.
"She was such a giving person. It was so right. ... I can't tell you how much better it feels if parts of your loved one are living. It is such a blessing," Laura Kinney said.
Kathleen Kinney's organs saved or enhanced lives for three Hawaii men and helped about 65 others who received tissue, bone marrow, blood and corneas, her sisters said.
Transplant recipients Ed McDowell and Robert Kevin O'Shaughnessy, both of Kauai, and Ted Bruhl, of Oahu, met Kinney's family and friends for the first time Saturday.
"Chicken skin," commented a bystander as the families hugged and exchanged leis and gifts.
Minor, Laura Kinney and six close friends of Kathleen's from Oklahoma came for an emotional annual Donor Recognition Ceremony at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
About 400 people, mostly donor families, attended the luncheon, hosted by the Organ Donor Center of Hawaii.
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM
Sisters and organ recipients of donor Kathleen Kinney, who died in 2002, posed Saturday for a picture at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki. They included Beth Minor, left, Robert Kevin O'Shaughnessy, Ted Bruhl and Laura Kinney.
Highlighting the ceremony, families released monarch butterflies on the hotel lawn to symbolize renewed life given to transplant recipients through organ donations.
The Hawaii residents received Kathleen Kinney's organs on July 28, 2002, and now say they are feeling well. McDowell has her liver; Bruhl, a kidney; and O'Shaughnessy, a kidney and pancreas.
Bruhl, 77, said he feels "a lot better" than when he was on dialysis for 3 1/2 years. He was in poor condition when told a kidney was available.
"To get excited about something, even as big as this, was beyond my capabilities," he said.
O'Shaughnessy, 48, said he saw McDowell on an early flight to Honolulu from Kauai July 28 and learned at the St. Francis Medical Center transplant center that he also was arriving for a transplant.
The two said they have since become as close as brothers. McDowell is broker for Vision Properties, and after his transplant, O'Shaughnessy got a real estate license and is working with McDowell in Kapaa.
"We have little gratitude sessions," McDowell said.
O'Shaughnessy, who had been on insulin for 22 years, said he had become a brittle diabetic in the past 10 years and was on dialysis about a year because of kidney failure. He said he did not let the disease stop him from doing anything. He surfed and worked out every day.
But the minute he woke up after the transplant, he felt "100 percent better," he said.
"It was just amazing. My pancreas just kicked in."
O'Shaughnessy said he waited a little more than a year to write a letter thanking the family because it was so emotional.
"I'd sit at the computer and try to collect my thoughts. It was so hard. I started 30 or 40 times."
McDowell, 54, said he is "dancing every day" with joy because of his new liver after a long illness.
Minor, Laura Kinney and the transplant recipients urge people to become organ donors.
"It's such a wonderful thing to know people's lives have changed," Kinney said.
They said Jane Lee, then a coordinator at the Organ Donor Center and now with the Transplant Center, helped them through every step of the donation process and testing of her sister.
Kathleen Kinney was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 14 and had struggled with mental disabilities. But she volunteered at an elementary school, had her own car and home and was loved by many people, Minor said.
The Kinney family gave the Hawaii transplant patients packages with a rose stone found only in Oklahoma, a painting of the symbolic butterfly by artist Teddi Schultz, and a picture of their sister when she was in Hawaii.
Watching a sunset on the beach the night before she died, Minor said her sister had tears in her eyes. She asked what was wrong, and her sister said: "I've been so happy. I don't ever want to leave. I wish I could bring all my friends here."
"She died having the time of her life in the most beautiful place," Minor said.
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Patients needing transplants
outnumber donorsAbout 400 Hawaii patients are on the waiting list for organs, with only six donors so far this year.
Those on the list include 369 who need a kidney, 23 waiting for a liver and three each in need of a heart, pancreas and kidney-pancreas.
Last year, 71 transplant patients benefited from 29 donors. Seventy-five people received organs from 26 donors in 2002, and 65 received transplants with organs from 26 donors in 2001, according to the Organ Donor Center of Hawaii.
Hundreds of other people benefited from tissue, eye and bone marrow donations.
The Donor Center said "phenomenal medical breakthroughs" occur daily in the transplantation field.
It is paying tribute in April during National Donate Life Month to the medical professionals and donors and their families who have helped save and improve the lives of others.
But while 70 people nationally receive an organ every day, 110 are added to the national transplant wait list, the donor center said.
"As a result, an average of 17 people will die each day while waiting for an organ, and in Hawaii this average is one person each month," the donor center said.
The center is encouraging Hawaii residents to become organ donors.
"Express your decision for organ donation on your driver's license, state identification or on a donor card and relay your decision to your family," the center said.
For more information, call 599-7630.
Star-Bulletin staff
