#Widow donates kidney to same man saved by her husband’s organs 16 years ago

Terri Herrington’s late husband saved a life 16 years ago when his organs were donated posthumously. Now, the Florida widow intends to do the same — and for the very same recipient.

In 2004, professional roofer Bryan Herrington, 35, lost his life when he fell from a house where he had been working. As a registered donor, his healthy organs saved the lives of four sick individuals, including Jeffery “Jeff” Granger, who received a pancreas and one of Bryan’s kidneys.

So when Jeff, 59, began to lose kidney function again, Terri, 49, was compelled to keep Bryan’s legacy alive.

“I want people to realize that being an organ donor doesn’t cost you anything. All kidneys [are] pink, there’s blood in all of them and everybody needs one,” she tells the Daily Mail.

For 30 years, Jeff lived with insulin-dependent diabetes before his kidneys began to fail — a common complication associated with the metabolic disease — in 2000. By 2004, he was placed on peritoneal dialysis to help extend his life as he waited for a kidney donor to become available.

On July 13, 2004, Jeff got a call that a man had passed away recently and was a perfect match for a transplant. Eventually, Bryan’s heart, lungs and liver went to three other recipients, while his kidney and pancreas ended up in Granger.

After transplantation, a grieving Terri and grateful Jeff decided to stay in touch, but remained anonymous for a year after surgery, per organ donor policy in Florida. Then, Terri disclosed her phone number in a letter.

Jeff called her right away. “I talked to her 45 minutes just like I’d known her all my life,” he says.

For the next 15 years, the pair, along with Jeff’s wife Pam and Terri’s two sons, Drake and Payton, remained close friends. Making their way from Pensacola across Florida’s panhandle, Terri and her sons would often stop at the Granger home in Wacissa, about 20 miles east of Tallahassee, for a meal or overnight stay, before heading down to Terri’s parents’ home in Orlando.

“We would go on the boat together,” says Terri, or Jeff and Pam would “come out to the beach” where she was with her family.

“I think it’s because of our location . . . So I can see him more often as opposed to the other recipients, who live further away,” Terri says of her relationships with Bryan’s organ recipients. “I’m friends with them, but it’s not as close as I am with Jeff.”

In April 2019, Jeff got the unfortunate news that Bryan’s kidney was beginning to fail, too — but it just so happened that Terri had a goal to become a living donor.

“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,’ ” she says. “He must have thought I was kidding or whatever and he stopped talking about it.”

But Terri stayed on the case: When Jeff shared the announcement on Facebook that he needed a kidney again, she left a comment: “Did you think I was kidding?”

“Yes! Did not take you serious[ly],” he replied.

She responded, “serious as a new kidney!”

Terri took all the necessary medical steps to ensure she was the appropriate match, including a chest X-ray, a CT scan of her abdomen and a battery of blood tests. By October, she was declared fit for donation. And the surgery was ultimately set for March 3 after some rescheduling.

Dr. Kenneth Andreoni, an associate professor and surgical director of kidney transplant at the University of Florida College of Medicine, tells the Daily Mail that Jeff and Terri’s story is unlike any he’s heard.

“There have been many, many amazing donation events. We’ve had co-workers come in and want to be tested anonymously,” he says. “We’ve had people within the donation program donate to patients they become friends with . . . but this one is truly unique, where the spouse of a deceased donor 16 years later would donate their own organs. That’s a new one to me.”

Terri and Jeff hope their story will inspire others to consider organ donation, which could save one of the 110,000 Americans currently waiting for a donor now, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

“You don’t have to be a living donor,” says Jeff, “but there’s no sense of putting organs in the dirt when you can save someone’s life.”

Many years ago, when Terri’s son Payton was still a toddler, he pointed to Jeff’s stomach and said, “My daddy’s in there.

“Sure is, son,” Jeff responded, “And I’m gonna keep him in there and alive as long as I can.

Now, Jeff boasts two Herrington organs, and feels “like a new man,” he says.