Father-daughter dance team medals at Transplant Games
August 22, 2010
Janice Gill has been competing in the National Kidney Foundation's U.S. Transplant Games since 1997. The 55-year-old Orland Park resident underwent a kidney transplant more than 15 years ago and said she takes part in a different event at the games every two years to honor her donor, a young girl who died in a crash.
"That's why I do different hard events, for my donor," Gill said.
John Gill and his daughter Janice recently earned a bronze medal in ballroom dancing at the Transplant Games.
(Brett Roseman Southtown/Star)
(Brett Roseman Southtown/Star)
But it's difficult for Gill to say which event was more difficult during last month's games: the 500-yard freestyle swim or the dance competition.
Gill and her father, John Gill, 86, also of Orland Park, captured the bronze medal in the games' first-ever dance contest last month in Madison, Wis. To compete in the contest, one of the participants had to be a transplant recipient.
"I think the dancing was a little harder because I was kind of nervous," Janice Gill said. "It was touching to be with him."
John Gill, a retired banker, said starting off the dance may have been the toughest part because it was emotional to dance with his daughter.
"What I was thinking about was her mother," John Gill said. "She would have been very proud. She was a very competitive girl. We had always danced a lot."
His wife, Joan Gill, who died in 2003 of a heart attack, suffered from polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and spent years on dialysis before she received a transplant in 1988.
Two of the couple's three daughters, Janice Gill and Jo Ann Villanueva, formerly of Oak Forest, also were stricken with the disease, in which cysts build up in the kidneys, reducing their function.
John Gill describes Janice, who works for a law firm, as a miracle.
"She got her kidney transplant one day before her first dialysis treatment," John Gill said.
Villanueva received a kidney from her other sister, Suzanne Ruff, in 2004.
Janice said she and her mother both competed in past games and Janice now competes with Jo Ann, usually in the 100-yard breaststroke. Janice swims at 5 a.m. every day to train.
John and Janice said they tried to convince Jo Ann and Suzanne to participate in the dance contest, but they live in different states, so it would have been too difficult for them to get together to practice.
Janice and her dad took lessons and practiced several times a week at the Fred Astaire Studio, which was in Tinley Park at the time but now is in Mokena.
"It was very moving to see what they did for us," John Gill said of the studio.
In addition to free dance lessons for the father-daughter team, Janice got extra lessons, and the studio even donated Janice's purple sequin dress.
"That's what really made us, was the dance studio was so generous," Janice said. "We didn't pay a dime."
Janice and John competed in the Latin dance category and performed a rumba to "My Girl" by the Temptations.
They were the first dancers to perform, which John and Janice both said was good.
"I don't think I was that nervous but grateful that we were first," Janice said.
Her dad added that they "set the pace."
For years, John had watched from the sideline as his family members participated in the games, which are modeled after the Olympics and intended to raise awareness about the importance of organ donations.
"It was very good to participate," he said. "To be in an actual competition was really nice and a thrill. It was actually a thrill to work with her."
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