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The gift of life
Detroit teacher donates a kidney to save a student's father
By all accounts, Wendi Campbell is a giver. So, it wasn’t out of character when the fifth-grade teacher volunteered to donate a kidney to the father of one of her students. “It’s still amazing to me that it actually happened,” says Campbell, 35, who is a member of the Detroit Federation of Teachers.
In March 2004, Campbell was a fifth-grade teacher at Coleman Young Elementary School in Detroit, and Daryl Studstill Jr. was one of her brightest students. Daryl rarely was absent from school, so when he missed three days in a row, his concerned teacher decided to pay her student a visit.
“I took some homework over to his house to check up on him,” Campbell recalls.
That’s when she learned that his father was in the hospital. Campbell already knew the Studstills because they were actively involved in school activities and in their son’s education. She visited the elder Studstill in the hospital to offer encouragement and prayers. The next week, Campbell got a telephone call from young Daryl’s grandmother who told her that Daryl Sr., 32, needed a kidney transplant and asked the teacher for help in learning more about organ donations.
During the conversation, Campbell volunteered to be tested. Days later, doctors told her that she was a match. Despite some initial reservations, Campbell decided to proceed with the surgery. She confirmed her decision after listening to a Sunday morning sermon that called on parishioners to be a “living sacrifice.”
“The Lord gave his life for us. The least I can do is donate a kidney,” Campbell remembers telling a family member. “People are here for different reasons; it’s a blessing to find your purpose in life and use it,” says Campbell. “I never imagined part of my purpose would be to save someone’s life.”
Sept. 29 marks a full year since the surgery. Both Campbell and Studstill are doing well. The teacher and the Studstill family talk weekly and spend holidays together.
Studstill returned to work within days of his surgery. Campbell is now teaching at a new school, John R. King Elementary, in Detroit. She is working toward a master’s degree in elementary education at Marygrove College.
Today, Campbell works with the National Kidney Foundation to help educate people about the importance of becoming organ donors.
“Organ and tissue donation can help plenty of people,”Campbell says. “I would like to get that message out. If I had another kidney to give, I would.”
Educator rises to the challenge
Member's 'safe haven' helps kids improve grades, stay out of trouble
I’m their mentor, their teacher, their helper.” That’s how Michael “Cully” Thoreson, a physical education and health teacher at Liberty Middle School in Clifton, Va., describes himself.
But comments from the academically and behaviorally challenged students Thoreson has worked with during the past three years indicate that he is more than that. For 2004-05 Liberty alums Michael Greenfield, Michael Smith and Lonnie Reed, Thoreson was a guardian, an authority figure—a good example.
“He kept me out of a lot of trouble,” says Smith. “It was a lot of help to come in here. He’s a good motivator. He just wants me to stay out of trouble.”
Thoreson, a member of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, started working with students outside of class during the 2002-03 school year—his first year at Liberty and his second year as a teacher. “There were a couple kids who I took under my wing,” he says. But what Thoreson was doing got the attention of school officials who now ask him each year to look after a few students who are a handful.
“When the kids see success, they want to see it again,” says Thoreson, who also coaches lacrosse, football and baseball. “I try to provide an environment to set themselves up to succeed.” That environment is Thoreson’s office just off the boys’ locker room.
“It’s like a safe haven,” says Reed. “It has opened my mind to new things. I feel like I have gained something from it. My work ethic has improved. I felt like I was responsible—like I had a job and I had to fulfill my duties.”
And Greenfield credits Thoreson with helping him improve his grades.
The key to the teacher’s success may just be his door-always-open, hands-off yet disciplined approach. “I can be a hands in my pocket, laid back kind of dude or a hard-apple son of a gun. I guess the kids just figure that out pretty quickly,” says Thoreson. “I am not going to chase them around and make sure they do the right thing. I hope that by hanging out they can learn how to do the right thing and then choose to do the right thing.”
