Story from Wenatchee World Newspaper...

The following is the story that was printed in the Wenatchee Daily World newspaper on April 10, 2005. They were kind enough to email us a copy and I would like to share it.


From: Abby Holmes
Date: 04/11/05 09:04:48
To: Bunting's
Subject: Re: donna van doran

A01 Story - Sunday - April 10, 2005

Man with new heart thanks woman who gave him life despite her own tragedy
By Michelle McNiel World staff writer

WENATCHEE -- Donna Van Doren sat at a picnic table Friday morning in Memorial Park with a bottle of sparkling cider and toasting glasses arranged neatly on a handmade quilt. Her shaky hands were folded tightly in her lap as she glanced nervously around the park.

Not far away, parked outside the Wenatchee Public Library, Rich and Suzii Bunting stood next to their sedan trying to work up the courage to walk into the park. Rich had been up most of the night with anxiety. They could see Van Doren sitting in the distance.

Then the couple, along with their 17-year-old daughter, Hannah, began slowly walking toward the woman whom they had never met but whose selfless generosity they credit with saving Rich's life four years ago.

Not sure they were the people she was waiting to meet, Van Doren, walking with a cane, met the family part way through the park. "Are you the Buntings?" she asked tentatively. After they said yes, tears began to fall down her weathered cheeks as she asked, "Can I hug you?"
Though they had never met, the Wenatchee woman and the Colville family had been inextricably linked since the death of Van Doren's grandson, 16-year-old Sam Brown, on June 15, 2001.

Brown had been at Wenatchee's Linden Tree Park when he jumped onto the front bumper of a friend's vehicle as it was driving around. The teen fell off and struck his head on the pavement.

After Brown was declared brain dead at Central Washington Hospital, Van Doren made the decision to donate his organs and tissue before life support was disconnected. Since both Brown's parents were dead, his grandmother had authority to make the decision.

At the same time, 200 miles to the northeast of Wenatchee, Rich Bunting was on a day-to-day wait for a call from his doctor that a donor heart had been found to replace his failing one. A mechanical heart pump implanted in his chest four months earlier was keeping him alive, but it wasn't expected to work for long. Bunting suffered from idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, a disorder with no cure in which the heart muscle is weakened and cannot pump blood efficiently.
Then the call came that a heart had been found. The Buntings raced to Sacred Heart Medical Center an hour away in Spokane. Van Doren was still at the Wenatchee hospital waiting for surgeons to finish and for her grandson to die.

Bunting, a certified nursing assistant before the heart defect left him unable to work, was one of several recipients who benefited from Brown's donated heart, liver, kidneys, eyes, lung, bone marrow, and skin tissue.

A year later, the Buntings sent a letter to the United Network of Organ Sharing to say they wanted to meet the donor's family. Van Doren also sent a letter, which was forwarded to the Buntings. Though her name was covered up, Rich Bunting admitted that he held the letter to a light to learn her identity. After waiting several days, he summoned the courage to call her.

"I cried afterward," Van Doren said. "I was just overwhelmed. Sam lives on."

It took three more years -- until Friday -- for both families to work up the nerve to actually meet.

Sitting around the park bench as traffic passed by on nearby Orondo and Chelan avenues, the Buntings and Van Doren drank the sparkling juice and toasted to Sam.

"He has been part of our daily lives for four years," Suzii Bunting said, adding that a picture of the boy sent to them by his grandmother hangs in their living room with other family photos. "I don't think a day has gone by that we don't mention how thankful we are for him."

The Buntings had a lot of questions for Van Doren. What was Sam like? Did he play football? Did he like fishing? What did he like to eat? Did he like lemons?

"Before the transplant I hated anything with lemons," said Rich, 41. "Now I can't get enough of them."

"Sam loved lemons," Van Doren said quietly.

She said Sam had overcome incredible hardship in his short life. His mother was murdered when he was just 19 months old, and he was sold by her killer to another couple. After police found him a few years later, he bounced between family members, foster homes and a group home. But he was still an outgoing, funny, athletic, "typical teenager" who liked to play drums, hang out with his friends and go fishing.

"I tell everybody that I'm raising two teenagers now," Suzii Bunting joked.

The Buntings gave Van Doren a necklace with three heart pendants on it -- one each for Suzii and Hannah Bunting and a single silver one representing the heart that Sam and Rich shared.
"It isn't much compared to what you gave me," Bunting said.

Though he's had few complications, Bunting said his body could still reject the heart and he takes 54 pills a day to try and prevent it from happening.

He said he wished more people would become organ donors.

Van Doren explained that she made the decision to donate her grandson's organs because he once asked her what the heart symbol on her driver's license meant. When she said it meant she wanted to donate her organs, he thought it was a cool idea.

"We thank God every day that you did," Suzii Bunting said.

The Buntings walked with Van Doren to her nearby apartment on Buchanan Street to look at pictures of Brown. Rich closely studied one of Brown at a school prom taken shortly before his death.

"He was a handsome boy," he said softly, touching his fingers to the picture and saying it brought "mixed emotions."

"I'm very sad that the accident happened. But if it hadn't, what would my outcome have been? If it wasn't for (Van Doren) and Sam, only God knows what would have happened to me next."--


It was a very emotional meeting... but one worth more than words can actually describe.