A 2,660-mile bike ride

Father deals with death of daughter

About halfway into his 2,660-mile bicycle ride from Wisconsin to Fort Lauderdale, Bill Conner made a stop in Louisiana to listen to his daughter’s heart, now beating in the chest of the man who would have died without it.

It was Father’s Day when Conner tearfully embraced transplant recipient Loumonth Jack Jr., outside of Baton Rouge. With a stethoscope Jack presented him as a gift, Conner heard a rhythmic sound of a heartbeat that might have been forever stilled.

“Abbey is alive in him,” Conner said of his daughter Abigail Mae Conner, a 20-year-old college student who died in January while on a family vacation in Mexico. “It was an out-ofbody experience. I spent Father’s Day with Abbey.”

In addition to Jack, three other men are now thriving, thanks in part to organs donated by Conner at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale.

Abbey Conner drowned within two hours of arriving at a resort in Cancun. Both she and her older brother Austin, 23, were apparently slipped a drug in drinks they ordered at the pool. When found they were both unconscious, facedown in chest deep water, Conner said.

Taken to a local hospital, Austin recovered. He went on to finish his senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, graduating in May.

Abbey never regained consciousness.

Bill Conner says authorities and investigators in Mexico