My dead husband’s alive... so I donated

Amazing story of how one man and then his wife gave their organs to rescue a diabetic

TERRI HERRINGTON was griefstricken when her husband unexpectedly died in a work accident 16 years ago, but she knew what to do.

The primary school teacher donated her husband’s organs to save the lives of four strangers.

Among them was Jeff Granger, a diabetic who received Bryan Herrington’s kidney and pancreas.

This year she saved his life again – donating one of her own kidneys as his earlier transplant was failing.

Terri went under the knife, and her donated kidney now rests beside her late husband’s kidney inside Granger’s body.

“We are back together,” says Terri, 49. The husband-and-wife gifts of life have touched America, inspiring renewed interest in organ donation.

“This girl was an angel,” says Granger, 59, from Wacissa, Florida. “I don’t know how I could thank her or repay her for such a wonderful life-giving gift.”

Terri, from Pensacola, Florida, shakes off suggestions that she is heaven-sent. “I’m just so glad and thankful that I was healthy enough to help,” she says.

Terri’s husband Bryan, 35, was repairing a leaky roof after a rainstorm when he slipped on a PVC pipe and hit his head on an air-conditioning unit in 2004. He fell into a coma, and was declared dead the next day.

Terri donated his organs to save three strangers who received Bryan’s lungs, liver, and heart. His skin was used to help more than 10 burn victims. And his kidney was given to Jeff Granger.

“One thing we heard quite a bit from the recipients is that they felt bad knowing somebody had to die for them to live,” says Bryan’s sister, Cerena Williams. “We say, ‘No, no, no.’ Bryan was dying anyway, from his injuries, and we were happy that it was the perfect situation where he was able to help others survive.

“You can’t take it with you, so you may as well pass it on.”

Diabetes ran in the family of electrician Jeff, and he had been insulindependent for 30 years. But in 2004 doctors revealed that he urgently needed a transplant, and began undergoing regular dialysis.

Receiving Bryan’s kidney transformed his life. “You flipped a switch and went from bad to great,” says Jeff, who was finally able to end dialysis.

For a year, the recipients of Bryan’s organs remained anonymous under Florida’s transplant privacy laws, but after 12 months Terri reached out to them, finding it brought comfort in her grief.

“Just hearing from them, and how much their life had changed, was a healing process for me and my boys in and of itself,” she says.

Terri disclosed her phone number in a letter, and Jeff thought: “Heck, I’ll give her a call. I didn’t know a thing about her.”

That soon changed, as Terri told him all about the husband whose kidney he had received.

Jeff learnt that Bryan had left behind five children: three by three different women, and two youngsters with Terri.

Over the following 15 years he and Terri became close friends, along with Jeff’s wife Pam and Terri’s sons Drake, now 21, and Payton, 16, who was only two months old when his father died. Though they live 220 miles apart in Florida, Jeff and Pam visited often. But Bryan’s transplanted kidney was not to last for ever. In April 2019, Jeff received the grim diagnosis that his implanted organ was failing. He was put back on dialysis, and was often too weary to leave his armchair all day.

“I’m losing Bryan’s kidney,” he told Terri. “I’m so sorry.”

Terri’s response was immediate: “Well, I’ve got one.”

She recalls: “When he told me, I was like, ‘You know, this is something I’ve been thinking about. Maybe you are the person I’m supposed to donate to. He must have thought I was kidding or whatever, and he stopped talking about it.”

But when Jeff posted on Facebook that he was searching for a new kidney, Terri replied: “Did you think I was kidding?”

“Yes!” he replied. “Did not take you serious.” Terri responded:

‘Through this, we’re family’