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The beat goes on: Mom connects with son’s heart recipient
By Ambria Hammel, The Catholic Sun
November 1, 2007
Though her only son died following an ATV accident in Rocky Point three and a half years ago at age 17, Lupita LeBario still listens to his heartbeat.
Roman — a St. Vincent de Paul graduate who would have been a senior at Bourgade Catholic High School — had decided to donate his organs years before.
Steve Bond received Roman’s heart and frequently visits the LeBario’s Phoenix home to let his mother hear it.
“When he walks in the door,” LeBario said, “I feel like it’s my son walking in.”
Her maternal instincts immediately kick back in. She offers him a drink and a chair at the family table where the two catch up.
She met Bond through Donor Network of Arizona a year after her son’s death and Bond’s transplant. The organ recovery organization recruits donors and works with hospitals and transplant centers statewide to match donors with recipients.
This November — National Donor Sabbath Month — it’s partnering with parishes to promote awareness about organ and tissue donation as an act of love and to encourage new donors to register.
“A lot of people are under the impression that Catholics don’t do that,” LeBario said of organ donation. She now helps the donor network dispel that myth. All major religions support organ donation.
The U.S. bishops called organ donation after death “a noble and meritorious act” that “is to be encouraged as an expression of generous solidarity.”
Stephen Napier, staff ethicist for the National Catholic Bioethics Center, called it an “altruistic act” that is inextricably linked with respect life issues.
Napier noted Pope John Paul II, who said organ donation is “a praiseworthy example” of embracing the Gospel of life in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.
LeBario remembers first talking to her son about organ donation when he was 8 years old.
When he applied for a learner’s permit to drive at 15, the topic came up again.
LeBario was used to seeing a space on the application to indicate a desire to be an organ donor, but it wasn’t there. Arizona removed that option from 1996 to 2006. So LeBario told her son it was enough for family members to know of his wishes.
“Little did I know that in a few years, he’d be an organ donor,” LeBario said.
She now surrounds herself with memories of her son while creating new ones with patients who are alive because of him.
Roman wanted to be a firefighter so he could save lives. He didn’t get the chance to rescue people in distress from a fire, but he did save others. An organ donor can reportedly save up to seven people.
In addition to Bond, LeBario has heard from the recipients of her son’s kidney and pancreas. She has also met the man who has her son’s liver.
Bond spent four years and three months on the heart transplant waiting list.
When his health further declined, Bond told his wife one night, “I may not see you in the morning.”
A few hours later, they got a call that a heart was waiting for him.
“Unfortunately, of course, they had to lose a son,” Bond said of the donor’s parents.
But thanks to Bond, they may become parents again. After learning that he grew up in foster care, LeBario checked into becoming a foster parent.
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