Summerall meets family of liver donor

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Former NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall called 16 Super Bowls. But this time, words came with great difficulty.

On Wednesday, Summerall met the mother, father and brother of the 13-year-old Pine Bluff junior high school football player whose liver the former NFL and University of Arkansas kicker received in a transplant in April 2004.

“I had no idea what to say, and talking is my business,” Summerall said. “It was a meeting of love, warmth. It was tearful, like we’d known each other for a long time.”

The boy, Adron Shelby, died suddenly from an aneurysm. His parents, Garland and Melva Shelby, decided to donate his organs, and Summerall, on the waiting list through the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., was a match. He received the lucky call.

Summerall said he wrote an anonymous letter to the family shortly after the transplant, thanking them for giving him another chance. The Arkansas Regional Organ Recovery Agency set up the meeting between the two families.

The Shelbys gave the Summeralls the program from Adron’s funeral. The families said they planned to keep in touch.

Adron’s family also donated the boy’s kidneys, heart valves and corneas. Summerall said he’s happy to lend his name and fame to promoting organ donation because he said when he was sick, he would say, “If I could just feel good one more time, one more day.”

“Now, I can feel good,” Summerall said, noting he’s feeling his best in 15 years.

“My numbers are better than they’ve been since I can remember.”