In death, Shawnee Mission East teen saves life of his pastor's brother

In the worst moment parents can imagine — their 15-year-old boy having been declared brain dead — Chris and Beth Carney of Prairie Village chose to affirm his life with a remarkable gift for a close family friend.

Just over a week before, on Feb. 7, the Carneys' son, Alex, a sophomore at Shawnee Mission East High School, was injured in a horrible car accident. At 10:30 a.m., the Dodge Charger he was riding in as a passenger with two sophomore classmates sped into a tree on Cherokee Drive near West 71st Street. The other boys survived.

Now, on the evening of Feb. 16, Alex's parents, Chris and Beth Carney, sat in prayer with their family pastor, Joe Funderburk, as Alex's body was being prepared for the removal of his organs and tissue for donation.

"It was the most powerful and meaningful moment in my ministry life," the senior pastor said in this month's newsletter from Nall Avenue Baptist Church in Prairie Village. "And I expect I will never experience anything like it again."

The reason: The man who was receiving one of Alex's kidneys was the pastor's own 47-year-old brother, Don.

It was Alex's father who suggested that perhaps Alex's kidney would help Don Funderburk. They had been friends for years through church. He knew his condition.

“Chris is the one who said, 'What about your brother? He's the one who's been on the list for so long,'" the pastor said in a telephone interview on Monday.

Before his son died, Alex's father had spoken at a candlelight vigil at Loose Park.

"We knew there was no hope for Alex, except that maybe we could make this tragedy a positive," he told his son's friends and classmates.

In his church's newsletter, the pastor described an evening with the family in caring detail: First with Alex at St. Luke's Hospital, where his organs were retrieved. Then, with his brother, who was being prepared to receive Alex's kidney at the University of Kansas Hospital.

"On Friday evening," he wrote, "nurses prepared to move Alex's body to surgery. Beth said goodbye to Alex in his hospital room. Chris walked him down to the surgery doors. In a gesture full of love and affection, Chris and Beth then accompanied me to KU Med. We prayed together, thanking God for Alex's life and the life-giving gifts others would receive.

"We felt joy mixed with sadness, and genuine love and appreciation."

A memorial written in Shawnee Mission East's school newspaper, The Harbinger, said that among an array of organs and tissues, Alex’s lungs were given to a 62-year-old woman, his liver to a man in his 50s, a kidney and pancreas to a man in his 30s.

The church newsletter said Alex's heart had gone to a boy, age 16, only a year older than Alex.

Don Funderburk, who turned 47 just after the transplant, had been suffering from kidney failure for 10 years, and had been on a waiting list for nearly four years, hoping to one day receive the vital organ.

When Alex's father mentioned donating the kidney, the pastor didn't give the offer much thought, as his focus was on the Carneys' tragedy. He also knew that the odds of any two kidneys matching for transplantation were slim.

"To be completely transparent," the pastor wrote, "I had neither considered it, nor felt comfortable thinking about it. I felt a rush of conflicting emotions I had never felt before."

The kidney ended up being a match. Joe Funderburk called his brother and sister-in-law. They felt torn.

"It was amazing and sad at the same time," Don Funderburk said from his home in Liberty, where he lives with his wife and three children.

"You're going through some heavy emotions knowing the kid. You feel blessed about having the kidney, but at the same time you're feeling the ultimate sorrow for people that you love so much."

It's been five weeks since Don Funderburk received Alex' kidney, and he said he's in good spirits and healing well.

But he can't help getting tearful when he discusses the gift the Carney family offered him.

"Knowing Chris as a father, it was tough," Don Funderburk said in a phone conversation. "And it was really tough to be thankful, knowing how hard it was for their family. I'm Christian and I know God has a plan. I just don't understand what the plan is sometimes."

The pastor also looks back on what his brother calls "a roller coaster" of feelings.

"You can imagine the conflicted emotions in them," the pastor said by phone. "From Don's perspective it is just very humbling that somebody would think of you in that way. But that it comes from the tragedy for a 15-year-old boy," — a boy he, in fact, knew — "that just multiplies it by a factor of 10."

As for the pastor's own feelings:

"I feel," he said, then paused, "thankful. It's a strange mix of emotions. I also feel that God has been in all of this, that even in tragedy, God plans and can bring about good. That is hard for people, for anybody, to wrap their head around. But I know that leaving that vigil — I was with the Carneys going back to the car, back to the hospital — I told them in that moment. 'Guys, Don's a match.' And through that awful, horrible experience, it was the only time I felt them joyful. We were hugging."

Don Funderburk is doing well because of Alex and his gift, the pastor said.

“We knew we weren’t going to get our boy back,” Chris Carney told his son's school newspaper. “Once we got the news, the only thing to do was something Alex would want. Something selfless, just like he was."

A selfless act of giving, Don Funderburk said, that falls directly in line with the type of people the Carneys are.

"If you knew Chris and Beth the way that I know them, they’re always the people who give," he says. "Chris is one of the best men I know. I couldn't say enough. I couldn't thank them enough."

This story was originally published March 26, 2018 at 4:10 PM with the headline "In death, Shawnee Mission East teen saves life of his pastor's brother."