LaFleur to donate kidney to father

• By PERRYN KEYS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 18, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Fifty years ago, Gervis La-Fleur gave his son the gift of life.

Today, his son will try to give it back.

At 8 a.m. in New Orleans, inside the sprawling Tulane Medical Center, a surgeon will cut open a small crease near the navel of 50-year-old Greg LaFleur, the former LSU tight end and current Southern athletic director.

Slowly and carefully, the surgeon will push aside some of Greg’s major organs, remove one of his kidneys and place it inside Gervis, his 74-year-old father.

This, more than anything else, is what Gervis needs. He learned in the summer only a kidney transplant can restore the kick in his stride. Upon learning the news, Greg figured, why shouldn’t he give up his?

“We heard about people on the waiting list (and) their sons and daughters wouldn’t donate,” Greg said. “I mean, to me — to us, as a family — that’s just incomprehensible.”

Besides, it’s not like Gervis could rely on his other kidney. He’s been living without that one for 54 years now.

In 1954, as a strapping young buck in the Army, doctors had to remove Gervis’ left kidney; he had been born with what he called “a kink” between that kidney and the bladder, causing complications.

Still, he recovered, lived with one kidney instead of two and never lost a step. The following year, he came back home to Ville Platte and married his childhood sweetheart, Lena. They’ve lived together for 52 years, rearing four children. She retired after 40 years as a teacher; he still serves as executive director of the Evangeline Community Action Agency.

Sunday night, as they sat in a Gonzales hotel lobby, they playfully jabbed at each other, the way only two old soulmates can.

Kidney transplant? Who’s worried?
Gervis shrugs it off.

Two days before the operation, Gervis looked like the picture of health at 74, slender and well-dressed, with salt-and-pepper hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and a positive attitude you can’t buy in stores.

“My family’s more worried about me than I am for myself,” Gervis said. “Makes me feel like a champ.”