The Jones family founded the nonprofit organization Donate 4 Life to encourage others to give as Chad did.
“He and his sister Jessica watched the movie Seven Pounds,” Sheree said. “It’s a film about organ donation and once they watched it together, it really affected him. He decided if he ever had the opportunity to become an organ donor, he would do it.”
Chad made the personal resolution to give his organs to others just two weeks before his unexpected death. His heart, kidneys and liver ended up sustaining the lives of four strangers. After doing some research, Sheree was surprised to find not as many other people were willing to make such a commitment.
“When Chad died in June 2009, between January and June of 2009 of our area, there were 147 donors, only two were registered donors. The rest were family members like us who consented to donating his organs,” Sheree said.
After Sheree registered online to be a donor, she learned that less than 400,000 people from Texas were registered. The Joneses quickly took action, convincing the mayor of Katy, Don Elder Jr., to proclaim Oct. 27, 2009 — Chad’s birthday — to be the official Charles Preston Jones Organ Donor Registration Day. The family set up registration booths, gaining their first 225 signatures, and hasn’t stopped since.
“We wanted Chad to save more lives than just the people he donated to and if that means registering someone that could become a donor, we want to do it,” Sheree said. “The organs are no good once you’re gone. And if you can save the life of somebody else, why wouldn’t you? There was a man that is a volunteer at Life Gift and he had a transplant 12 years ago. When I first met him, he said, ‘I have a 10-year-old granddaughter who wouldn’t have known me outside of a picture if I hadn’t had a heart transplant.”
Donate 4 Life has worked closely with Life Gift, the organ procurement organization that served as the middleman for Chad’s organ donations, to advocate the cause. Due to strict medical stipulations about matching organ donors to recipients, less than 4 percent of all voluntary donors can actually donate organs, said Laura Frnka, director of communications at Life Gift.
“Right now, we’ve got more than 110,000 people across the country that are waiting for some kind of life-changing transplant. And in Texas alone, we’ve got nearly 11,000,” Frnka said. “The pool of available donors is actually quite small … I always say the stars have to be lined up for the donation to happen because there are so many things that have to be just right.”
By registering over phone, at the local driver’s license office or online at donatelifetexas.org, donors make a legally binding agreement to donate organs, a decision that cannot be overridden by family members after death. The more people who register, the larger pool of possible donors and the more likely lives will be saved, allowing recipients to do things they never imagined possible.
“I’ve been able to travel the world. I’ve been able to go back to work and be able to actually live. Before I couldn’t leave the house, I was on bed rest,” said Jennifer Lewis, a Katy resident who received a liver transplant 14 years ago. “You will know somebody in your life who either needs an organ or has given an organ, but it’s not until that time of need that you realize how important it is.”
The connection forged between organ recipients and donors’ surviving family members is unique and continually honored. Often these two groups, connected by another’s gift, volunteer together with Life Gift.
“To meet [my donor’s family] the first time was extremely emotional because I realized their loss was my gift,” Lewis said. “Stephanie was afraid that I might not want to meet her once I found out that they were African-American and that never crossed my mind … she’s become a part of my family.”
Lewis’ donor, 17-year-old Stecil, helped her recover from thrombosis of the liver caused by Hepatitis C contracted from a blood transfusion in 1986. Lewis has lived to see her four blue-eyed grandchildren, whom she happily shares with Stecil’s mom, Stephanie, who calls them her “donor grandchildren.”
“Everything for us is forever connected,” Lewis said. “That’s how Stephanie and I sign off our letters to each other: ‘forever connected.’”
In December 2010, the Joneses met Chad’s heart recipient, Houston resident Larry Johnson, a Grammy Award-winning bass player, a coincidental profession considering Chad’s love of the video game Guitar Hero. This past January, Chad was chosen by Bridge to Life, a biotechnology company that produces organ preservation solutions, to have a floragraph — a portrait made of flowers, seeds and other natural materials — in his honor at the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif.
“That was just an experience we’ll never forget. To be there with 60 other families that had been through the same things we’d been through and getting to see the parade itself,” Sheree said. “There were a million different kinds of flowers and we were so inspired by it, we decided we had to do something similar ourselves this year.”
Donate 4 Life will be sponsoring a floragraph in the 2012 Rose Parade for organ donor Patrick Nunnelly of Dallas, who died in July 2010. Sheree said the organization is hoping to honor other donors like Chad and Nunnelly with a traveling, educational Organ Donor Hall of Fame exhibit, which she hopes to display in the George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
As part of Donate 4 Life’s continuous goals to register as many organ donors as possible, the next few months will be spent preparing for the Third Annual Chadmod Donate 4 Life Benefit on October 29 at the Merrell Center. Planned festivities include a car and motorcycle show; three live bands, including Chad’s bass-playing heart recipient; a silent auction and photo booth. Organ and bone marrow registrations, the Bloodmobile and child fingerprinting will also be available.
“I think that this was probably something that we did not choose for ourselves. I think it was probably something that was chosen for us,” Sheree said. “We are just very passionate about being able to save lives.”
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