Wewoka boy’s death inspires skate park, organ donation

Jaycee Sheffield, a Wewoka boy who died at age 12, lives on in memorial skate park, organ donation promotion and his mother’s speaking

BY DAVID ZIZZO | NewsOK

WEWOKA — “One of these days I’m going to be famous,” Jayce Sheffield would say.

He had also mentioned he hoped someday something in his hometown of Wewoka would be named after him, said his mother, Paige Sheffield.

She figured it was all just daydreams of a boy imagining himself a professional baseball player or bull rider, activities for which he already had shown unusual talent.

Now Sheffield wonders if somehow he had a premonition. Next week will mark five years since Jayce crashed his four-wheeler on the family’s rural land, killing him instantly.

Today, skaters from throughout the state will gather the day before Jayce’s birthday for the annual Jayce Ray Sheffield Memorial Skate Tournament at Jayce Ray Sheffield Memorial Skate Park in Wewoka.

When Jayce died, Paige Sheffield’s heart almost stopped, too. Certainly life stood still for the Sheffields that day, although two months later, the family was hosting a foreign exchange student.

‘HE DID EVERYTHING"

’Paige Sheffield had always marveled at how Jayce had been involved in so much at such a young age. Football, baseball, basketball, Boy Scouts. When he was 9, Jayce would play paintball with adults in the summer heat for six hours at a time.

Jayce even rode bulls, traveling to an arena in Wanette to take on bucking animals, the activity his mother figured would be the most likely to get him hurt.

“He did everything,” recalled Sheffield, 47.

But on that dark day in April 2006, her boy, once so vital, lay lifeless in a hospital, forever 12. Even at that terrible moment, Paige Sheffield found some light. She remembered Jayce was entranced by a series of hospital commercials about organ and tissue donation, giving an emphatic “Shhhh!” whenever the ads appeared on television.

DONATION OF LIFE

Sheffield donated what she could of her son — corneas, heart valves and tissue. She found other good in the tragedy.

Since Jayce had served on a committee working to get a skate park built in Wewoka, even traveling around the state to scope out other parks, the family decided to make it happen.

With $120,000 of their own money and a smattering of donations, Paige and Tony Sheffield built the venue, a 50-foot-by-100-foot park with “the full layout” of what their son’s committee wanted, and they donated it to the city.

And Paige Sheffield began talking about the family’s experience. She traveled the state, speaking to nursing groups, civic clubs and other gatherings, spreading the word that life can be fleeting, but that it also can continue through organ and tissue donation. She serves on an organ donor education council.

The pain never goes away, though, Paige Sheffield said.

The family still has Jayce’s four-wheeler in the corner of the shop.

“I think one of these days, we’ll just bury it,” she said.

But Paige Sheffield said that everywhere she sees “cool Godlike things” that hint of her boy’s presence, such as his friends all signing up to be organ donors and fliers bearing Jayce’s picture hanging in tag offices promoting organ donation.

Today, the Sheffields will sing happy birthday to Jayce and release 17 balloons representing the age he would have been. Then the skating will begin.

“I can’t tell you all the good things that have happened through his death,” his mother said.