Ex-Cowboy To Give Kidney To His Teammate

This is a story about true friendship. With all the bad news in the world today, it is good to see a story that highlights the good done by one human for another.

Ron Springs and Everson Walls were teammates on the Dallas Cowboys [and both are respected and loved by many Cowboy fans, including me]. During their stay with the Cowboys, they became very close friends. That friendship grew over the years and came to include their wives and children. The families have vacationed together, and Springs even spoke at the funeral of Wall's father-in-law.

But in recent years, Ron Springs has had some medical difficulties. He has diabetes, and has had to have his right foot and some toes on his left foot amputated. The disease has also attacked and destroyed his kidney. For the last two years, he has had to have dialysis treatment three times a week. The disease has also put him in a wheel chair.

But all that will soon change. Everson Walls is donating one of his kidneys to his friend. The transplant will allow Springs to return to a normal life, abandoning the wheel chair and the painful dialysis treatments. The operation will be performed next March.

Springs says, "This man has got to love me in order to give up something. He's taking some risk. It's something you can't explain, but something I will always think about every day for the rest of my life. It's like getting a new battery in a car. I'll be able to be back to basically almost 100% normal."

Walls counters, "A piece of me is going to be inside him and hopefully giving him a lot more life than he would've had otherwise. To me, friendship is unconditional."

Friendship is unconditional -- what beautiful words! And what a wonderful example of friendship these two men show the rest of us. I wish them both a speedy recovery from their coming operations, and a long and bountiful life. They deserve it.