Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
FAMILIES GET
FRANKIE McCulloch is living proof that something wonderful can come out of tragedy.
The 20-year-old mum is only alive thanks to a stranger’s decision to carry an organ donor card.
When she was a baby, her liver was packing up because of a rare disease.
Time was running out but fate intervened when Lee Jones, a shy 22-yearold warehouse worker, decided to go on a rare night out. As he walked home a thug punched him for no reason. He banged his head on the pavement and died in hospital three days later.
Lee had carried a donor card since he was 16 so his parents honoured his wishes and his organs saved six lives.
BITTERSWEET
Frankie got half his liver – the other saving someone else in desperate need.
Now Frankie has told how she and her family have formed a strong friendship with the parents of the man who saved her life.
“I owe this man everything,” she says. “I know I am alive today and have had the joy of becoming a mother myself because of him.
“Lee was only 22 when he died and I’m almost that age now.
“He lost his life so young, when he had so much to live for. I am determined to live my best life for both of us and make him and his family proud.”
Frankie was born with biliary atresia, meaning her bile ducts were undeveloped, causing irreversible liver damage. After Lee’s death in January 2005, she had a
10-hour liver transplant at St
James’s University Hospital in Leeds aged 17 months.
As she recovered, her parents Wayne and Louise, from Houghton-le-Spring, Sunderland, received a letter asking if they would like to meet the donor’s parents, Andy and Jackie, of
Rhyl, North Wales.
“My parents really wanted to meet Lee’s mum and dad and thank them. Their precious son had saved my life,” Frankie says.
A few years after the transplant they met and the bond was instant.
Frankie says: “Jackie and Andy are wonderful people. Whenever we see them it’s incredibly emotional and bittersweet. They had lost their child and because of that I was alive.
“They’ve watched me grow from a little girl into a woman and now a mother and I hope they are proud.
“Knowing that part of Lee lives on in me is a miracle. I am grateful for every day I’m alive.”
Frankie is a mum to Rhys, two – who has the middle name Lee – with partner Nathan Williams, 24.
“Rhys has brought so much joy but he wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Lee,” she says.
“Becoming a mother has been the most wonderful, joyous experience. There is no love like it. It’s made me more aware of the pain that Lee’s parents went through when he died.
“When I gave birth to Rhys I wanted Lee and his family to be part of it too. That’s why I named him Rhys Thomas
Lee Williams. And I will tell my son all about what happened one day and how we are both here because of Lee.”
Louise, 52, a civil servant, says: “We will forever be grateful to Jackie and Andy for Frankie’s gift of life but we will never forget what they had to endure with their son.”
Lee, who had a twin brother Dean, now 42, and an older brother Wayne, 50, never regained consciousness after the attack which fractured his skull.
Jamie Scott, then 17, admitted manslaughter and got three-and-a-half years in youth custody. Three months before killing Lee, he had been given a community order for punching a man in the face.
Remembering Lee, his mum, 63, says: “Andy and I brought up our three boys to be amazing, kind and caring and they never let us down.
“Our family was completely torn apart when Lee lost his life so tragically.