Letter comforts donor's parents

Six patients were helped by the young man's organ donations.
BEAVERCREEK, Ohio (AP) -- A couple says their work with organ and tissue transplants did not prepare them for the emotion of dealing with the donation of their 24-year-old son's liver when he was killed in a bicycle accident.
But they are comforted by a thank-you letter from the parents of a boy with a deadly liver disease who got the organ.
"It was overwhelming," Ken Blair said. "It just gave credence to what we had done. They wrote such an eloquent letter. I said, 'OK, this is the good part.'"
Blair and his wife, Ellen, got a late-night phone call in May 2005 at their house in suburban Dayton, telling them that their son, Don, had been struck by a van while riding his bicycle outside his Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment.
He worked in the fashion industry and was scheduled to fly to his parents' home hours earlier to visit on Memorial Day weekend but had been bumped from his flight.
A portion of Blair's liver was donated to Jax Schindler, a 5-month-old from New York City.
Jax recovered quickly from the severe malnutrition and buildup of toxins from his diseased liver. The day after he returned home, his parents wrote a letter to the anonymous parents of Jax's liver donor. The Blairs gave the New York organ bank permission to forward the letter to them.
What they wrote
In the letter, Jonathan and Heather Schindler explained that Jax was named Alexander Jack Schindler for his grandfather, who was a rabbi. They said one of the rabbi's teachings was that people's souls will never die when loved ones keep them in their memories.
"In the case of your son, it is so much more than a memory that keeps him alive," they wrote. "Your son's beautiful gifts have touched many, and he truly does live on."
Don Blair's organs also went to five other patients.
"When you say Don is important to us, it goes beyond that," said Jonathan Schindler. "There's a piece of Don that is inside our son and sustaining his life. He's a part of us."
Ellen Blair is manager of recovery services for Life Connection of Ohio, an organ procurement agency that serves west central and northwest Ohio. Her husband directs tissue recovery -- bones, skins and ligaments for grafts -- for Community Tissue Services.
Several months after the Schindlers wrote their letter, they got one back from the Blairs.
"It was a beautiful letter telling us all about Don," Heather Schindler said.