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An even greater lesson

arm, friendly, attractive, gifted. That described Julie, one of my all-time
W
favorite students from human development courses I taught at the
University of Nebraska. She was a delightful person and an ideal student.

I remember Julie coming to the front of the classroom after class one
autumn day in September 1976. While most of the other students hurriedly
left to enjoy the balmy weather or to relax at the student union, Julie remained to ask questions about

the next week’s exam. She had obviously already done some serious studying. Several other students
overheard Julie’s questions and joined our conversation. Julie’s winsome personality drew people to
her.

But Julie never made it to the exam. The day after our conversation, she was struck by a large
truck as she biked through an intersection near campus. I was stunned to hear that Julie lay
unconscious and motionless in a hospital opposite the campus where only hours before she was
talking with friends, laughing, making plans for the future.

Only minutes before the accident, Julie and her mother had enjoyed one of their customary daily
telephone conversations. Her mother recalls their last conversation. “Julie was so bubbly. At a store
near the campus, she had seen an outfit she wanted to wear on a special date, and I told her to go
ahead and buy it. She didn’t take her car because she would lose her parking place on campus.

Instead, she jumped on her bike to go buy the new outfit. The accident happened just a short distance
from the sorority house where she lived.” My thoughts cried out to Julie - You cannot die, Julie!
You’re every professor’s dream - and every parent’s. You have so much to offer. So much to live for.

Nurses silently came and went from Julie’s room. Her parents stood nearby in quiet desperation.
Then the physician entered the room, cleared his throat, and said to Julie’s parents and two brothers,
“Your Julie has only a few hours to live.” He felt the freedom to ask, “Would you consider donating
some of Julie’s organs?”

At that same hour in a neighboring state, Mary leaned forward, struggling to see better in her
small, cluttered living room. Her eyes followed every movement of her lively two-year-old. This
devoted mother was storing up memories to savor when she could no longer see her child. Mary was

going blind.

Several states away, John had almost finished six hours on the dialysis machine. This young father

was reading to his two sons while his immobilized body was connected to a “artificial kidney.”
Doctors had given him a grim prognosis of only weeks to live. His only hope was a kidney transplant.

At the same time in the Lincoln, Nebraska, hospital, Julie’s grief-stricken parents pondered the
finality of the physician’s question. Their pretty brunette, brown-eyed daughter had once said she
wanted to be an organ donor in the event of her death. The two parents looked at each other briefly,
the anguish in their hearts reflected in their eyes. Then they turned to the physician and responded,