SUMMERALL To Meet Liver Donor's Family

(From The USA Today -- By Michael Hiestand)

Wednesday, PAT SUMMERALL will visit a family in LITTLE ROCK that didn't want to get near him for a while. "They wanted no part of meeting me," he says. "It's going to be tough."

No wonder. That family's son, who died of an aneurysm at age 13, kept Summerall alive -- and became part of him.

Summerall, 75, is a recovering alcoholic who got the boy's liver in a transplant in April 2004. Summerall was the closest thing the sports world had to a voice of authority over 40 years of broadcasting after his retirement as an NFL player in 1961. He qualified for the organ in a system that ranks potential recipients anonymously, but he wondered if he should have been picked.

"When you're lying there thinking you're going to die without a new liver, I wondered, frankly, whether I deserved another chance," he says. "I'd lived a good and full life. But then you figure GOD's not through with you yet."

In a standard procedure, he was asked to write to the donor's family -- without revealing anything about his identity. They had the option of replying. They didn't. Summerall, who has spoken to families of organ donors, says seeing recipients can raise "bitter memories. It can be an uncomfortable way to think of a loved one."

Although Summerall, born with a club foot, and doctors never expected he'd be able to run, he played football at THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, came back for A MASTER's DEGREE in RUSSIAN HISTORY and often returns to the state. Because of those local ties, he says, THE LITTLE ROCK FAMILY "somehow found out I'd got the liver. But they said they didn't care, didn't want to meet me."

Now, he says, "Some of the bitterness has gone away." And Summerall, who left FOX after the 2002 NFL SEASON, wants to add to the list of things made possible by the passing of a teenager -- "I feel better than I've felt in 10 years. It's a miracle" -- and he'd "like to be" back on TV calling NFL games. He deserves another chance.