DALLAS — In life, he was a popular, athletic young Texan who hadn't decided what to do with his future.
In death, as an organ donor, he gave a half-dozen people their futures, among them a truck driver, a farm manager, a backwoods-resort operator and an American legend named Mickey Mantle.
"There's not words enough to thank him," said Darwin Hamrick, of Comanche, Texas, who received the donor's left lung on June 8. "Just think how many lives have been saved."
Ironically, the donor recently had saved another life. About a week before his death, he was at a lake near his hometown when a man trying to swim to an island started to go under.
The donor, a water skier and former lifeguard, swam out and pulled the man a long distance to shore, a friend said. The heroics seem a fitting prelude to his fate.
A smalltown bank teller in his 20s, the donor awakened June 8 with a headache. He collapsed before leaving his home for work, comatose from a ruptured blood vessel in his brain, and died that afternoon.
His death put into motion a series of events culminating in six lifesaving operations at the Baylor hospital, with patients receiving a heart, lungs, kidneys and pancreas, as well as the liver.
