Out of tragedy, a gift for others through organ donation

CHESAPEAKE

Next month, Jacqueline Jackson will face two tough milestones: the first anniversary of her husband's death and a court hearing for the man accused of his murder.

Last May 2, Keldrick Jackson was shot in the head inside his friend's car as they drove home from a Norfolk sports bar. Police arrested a man they had argued with inside the bar and charged him with the killing.

By the time Jackson arrived at the hospital, her husband was on life support.

Jacqueline, a 25-year-old graduate student at Old Dominion University, didn't think long about what to do. Both she and her husband's driver's licenses noted they were organ donors. She told doctors to salvage all the organs they could.

She spent two final days with her unconscious husband at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. While she waited, she saw multiple helicopters arrive - transplant teams coming to harvest life-giving organs, tissue and even some of Keldrick's bones.

Within hours of his death, Keldrick Jackson's heart was pumping inside the body of a 55-year-old man in Charlottesville. His left kidney and pancreas were transplanted into another patient in Charlottesville. His liver went to a 52-year-old woman and his right kidney to a 16-year-old boy, both in Virginia. And in North Carolina, Jackson's lungs helped a 46-year-old mother of two breathe normally again.

His corneas were transplanted, too: one in Virginia, one in California, according to LifeNet Health, a provider of organ donation and tissue banking services.

Doctors removed tissues and bones from his forearms. They took every other rib and much of his skin.

"I believe his soul went to heaven and his body didn't need his organs anymore," Jacqueline Jackson said. "I wanted something good to come out of a tragedy like this."

Knowing that Keldrick's organs are helping others live has helped her cope with her husband's death, she said.

"This was my Christmas present," she said, pulling a letter out of a scrapbook.

The note came from the recipient of Keldrick's liver. She described getting the long-awaited phone call that her prayers had been answered.

Still, the woman wrote, even as her husband drove her to the hospital, she grieved for the unknown donor who had to die so she could live. They prayed before the surgery for the doctor doing the transplant, and for the family grieving the loss.

"My husband tells me now I have two birthdays," she wrote.

Jackson has since written to all of the recipients, telling them a little bit about her husband, who loved being in the Navy and cracking up his six sisters and many friends.

An information technology specialist aboard the amphibious assault ship Saipan, Keldrick had been transferred to the carrier Carl Vinson but hadn't yet reported for duty when he died. He planned to make a career of the Navy, Jackson said.

"I told them who he was, what he believed in, what he liked," she said. "I tell them he was only 25, but lived a full life."

She didn't tell the donors that police believe her husband was murdered.

Keldrick's buddy, the one who was at the Military Highway sports bar with him the night he died, told Jacqueline that a man got into an argument about religion with them. He was told to leave the bar, she said, but was waiting outside when the sailors left.

Accounts differ about what happened next.

Jackson said police told her that Nicholas Ford, a 21-year-old from Suffolk, waved a gun and followed them down the street. Ford's lawyer, Andrew Sacks, said Ford feared for his own safety after Jackson retrieved a baseball bat from the trunk.

Prosecutors withdrew a second-degree murder charge in September after a grand jury indicted Ford on a charge of first-degree murder.

Sacks said Ford plans to plead not guilty by reason of self-defense. A hearing is set for May 5.

Jackson said her toughest days have come with silver linings.

The day Jackson died, her sister learned she was pregnant, after years of attempts. The baby, a niece, was born on Keldrick's birthday - Dec. 2.

It's her husband's "little message from up above that life goes on," Jackson said.

She is determined to face the future with courage.

"I have to do what I can to go on with my life and honor his memory," she said, her eyes watering, as she rubbed the edge of the Navy scrapbook with her left hand. "I accept the fact that it was his time."

Later this month, Jackson will celebrate Keldrick's life with LifeNet. The celebration dinner happens to fall on her own birthday - another interesting coincidence.

"LifeNet has been so great," Jackson said. "They do so much for the families that people don't know about."

She wants people to know the facts about organ donation.

"If they believe in a higher power, their soul's going to heaven, not their body," she said. "Their body is going into the ground."

Of her husband, she said simply: "He was a hero in his life and he was a hero in his death."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com