Kevin Lind isn’t your average 58-year-old.
As the recipient of a heart transplant he has faced down death and has worked ever since to become a competitive athlete.
Lind, a 1975 Iola High grad who lives in Olathe, will compete in his second Transplant Olympics Games this summer. He was in Iola this week to visit his mother, Lenora Lind, and encourage people to donate organs. April is Organ Donor Awareness Month.
The gift of an organ surpasses all others, according to Lind.
“Even if you don’t think your life is worth a damn, it may be to others,” he said. Every body comes with eight organs that are suitable for transplant, including the heart, liver, lungs and kidneys. Twenty-two people die each day in the United States waiting for transplants, Lind said.
Lind has had more than his share of health battles, including a stroke, cardiac sarcoidosis that led to a transplant in 2011, and now, prostate cancer.
As for the heart transplant, it came as something of a surprise. Only weeks earlier, he was led to think a program of rehabilitation would be sufficient to get him back up to snuff.
But it wasn’t to be and on June 6, 2011, surgery occurred. “When I woke up I didn’t even know if it (the surgery) had happened. I knew I felt a lot better. I could breathe better. You could just tell you felt better.”
AND HOW.
At his first Olympics he won the long jump and came within an inch of winning a bronze medal in the shot put.
His winning jump was a little less than 12 feet.
“We were ecstatic,” he said, not only for the gains the win signaled in his efforts to regain his health but also what it might mean to his father, Bob Lind, who at the time was a patient at Moran Manor, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
“He was my focus,” Lind said. “I showed him the medal. I think he was proud.” Bob Lind died Nov. 27, 2014, a few months after the Houston games.
“I never expected to be able to do something like this,” he said of the Olympic competitions. His first was in Houston.
This summer’s is in Cleveland.
If he wins a medal in Cleveland it comes with a chance to go to Spain for the international games.
