Jerry and Connie Inman of Mechanicsville were married for 56 years after meeting on a blind date while they attended the University of Northern Iowa, where both studied education. They shared two children and five grandchildren.
Jerry says Connie had devoted her life to helping others, especially children. For 34 years, she worked as a teacher, primarily instructing first graders. She was a member of the Stanwood Library Board and very involved in summer reading programs.
Connie also was a very devoted member of the Stanwood Lions Club and helped screen children for vision impairments as part of the Iowa KidSight Program.
“Before she passed away, we probably, serving as a two-person screening team, screened more than 10,000 kids,” Jerry says.
For ten years, Connie put up a gallant fight against interstitial lung disease.
The only way to curb the illness is to have a lung transplant, but Jerry said she decided against pursuing that option.
During her final years, Jerry says the two never discussed the possibility of eye, organ, and tissue donation. But he did know that Connie had the red heart on her driver’s license, which meant she was registered as a donor.
When Connie passed away at home on the night of October 17, 2021, Jerry called emergency services to the home.
“One of the gals that was on the ambulance crew that night was a friend of my daughter’s; they had worked together on the Mechanicsville ambulance crew for 3 years,” Jerry says. “After she made the necessary phone calls to verify it was ok for the mortician to come, she mentioned donation to me. I said go ahead, do whatever you have to do to do that.”
Many people are unaware that registering as an eye, organ and tissue donor isn’t necessarily a guarantee that donation will move forward at the time of death. For one thing, automatic referrals only occur if the death occurs in a hospital. That means if a person passes away elsewhere, like at home in Connie’s case, someone must make a call as soon as possible to Iowa Donor Network, which works with Iowa Lions Eye Bank to screen potential donors, at 1-800-831-4131.
Jerry says there are several misconceptions that surviving family members may have when it comes to donation.
“We don’t want to judge by saying a person is too old; Connie was 76,” Jerry says. “And you don’t want to say preexisting health conditions might make it so that person can’t be a donor, because Connie had been fighting this disease for ten years.”
Jerry says he also did not realize that when you signify your interest in donation, you get an immediate phone call from Iowa Donor Network.
“They go through the medical history, and it probably ran 45 minutes,” Jerry says of the call. “I realized it’s necessary for them to get the medical history, and I appreciated that they need it.”
A thorough medical and social history questionnaire is required for potential eye donors to prevent potential transmission of certain infectious diseases, identify conditions that may disqualify transplantation, and determine that the tissue is suitable for transplant.
“I got information back from Iowa Donor Network that she donated her skin,” Jerry says. “Whether it was ever used or not, I don’t know. I also received a letter eight days after her death, from Iowa Lions Eye Bank, expressing their sorrow and letting me know that both corneas were transplanted. My daughter and myself were very proud that her death was not in vain, that it did help other individuals.”