‘What Sean wanted’
By Michael King
Post-Crescent staff writer
During his relatively short life, Sean Veirauch encountered bumps in the road, but he always had a good heart.
Today, the 16-year-old Neenah boy’s heart is beating in the chest of a grateful 53-year-old Wisconsin man, one of six organ recipients helped by Sean’s selflessness.
“It was just a matter of doing what Sean wanted,” said his mother, Cheryl Veirauch.
Sean, who would have turned 17 on Nov. 11, died Oct. 31 at Theda Clark Medical Center after an apparently accidental shooting at his east-side home.
A day earlier, two friends said, Sean was trying to dislodge the slide from a jammed handgun by hitting it on the living room floor. The gun discharged and a bullet struck him in the eye.
In coping with Sean’s death, his parents, Paul and Cheryl Veirauch, and sister, Shallin, 14, are urging families to talk about organ donation and consider giving what the Veirauchs call “the gift of life” to others.
It was a gift Sean decided to give early on. At age 7, he told his parents he wanted to be an organ donor, after the family had watched a television show about a young girl who’d received a heart transplant.
“We were standing in the dining room and the show was over and he said, ‘I want to donate my organs,’” Cheryl Veirauch said. “I stood there for a moment and said, ‘Well, Sean, you have to be dead to donate your organs.’ He kind of gave me this look and said, ‘Well, mom, if I’m dead I’m not going to need them.’”
As it turned out, others did need them.
“The gentleman that got his heart said he’ll think of Sean every day for the rest of his life,” Cheryl said.
The other donations were to a 50-year-old Rockford, Ill., man (liver); a 59-year-old Missouri man (lungs); a 33-year-old Rhode Island woman (pancreas); and a 49-year-old Escanaba, Mich., woman and an Alabama man (kidneys).
“Sean would be thrilled,” Cheryl said.
‘A very good soul’
Sean’s parents remember their son as a kind-hearted but impulsive and somewhat fearless teen-ager with a good sense of humor who enjoyed motorcycles, horses, skateboarding, baseball, football and hockey.
“He was a very good soul, very kind kid,” Cheryl said. “He was very, very compassionate to people, animals, everyone. Even when he got into trouble, he was always respectful and remorseful.”
Paul Veirauch said his son always stood up for the underdog.
“That was basically where the bumps in the road came for him,” Paul said. “He felt sorry for kids who came from these dysfunctional families. He was always worried about the kids who got picked on.”
During the past couple of years, Sean had been in trouble with the law, mostly for property crimes, and spent a few months at a state juvenile corrections facility.
“He always felt just terrible, but he could never explain why he did (the) things he did,” Cheryl said.
“So much of Sean’s life had been focused lately on his difficulties (that) this wonderful person kind of got lost in there.”
Asking, ‘What if?’
The family still is troubled by the possibility that Sean might have survived if the two boys he was with when the shooting happened had called 911 right away.
Instead, the teens left their friend behind with a cell phone and removed the gun and money to cover up an Oct. 30 burglary at a home near the Veirauch residence. The gun and money had been taken in that crime.
Shallin Veirauch discovered her brother when she returned from school.
By early the next morning at the hospital, the pressure from a blood clot on Sean’s brain had gone down. But a couple of hours later, he had two strokes that basically ended his chance to survive. He was declared dead by late afternoon.
The boys, now age 15, recently were sentenced to up to three years at a state juvenile corrections facility and five years of supervision on charges of armed burglary and for giving a firearm to a person under 18 resulting in a death.
“I understand that my son bears some responsibility here,” Cheryl said after the two boys were sentenced. “I wish he was here to face his consequences. Unfortunately, by their actions, he can’t be.”
Something positive
Sean’s organ donations provide a small, but important, respite from sadness and grief for his family.
“We keep calling it ‘the island in our storm,’” Cheryl said. “He died a violent death and it was horrible, and this is something positive. There’s no question we would do anything to have our son back, but obviously that can’t happen.”
Now, they find comfort in the words of the Upper Michigan woman who received one of Sean’s kidneys.
“Giving unknown people a new lease on life is one of the most magnanimous gifts one can give,” she wrote in one of three letters received from the organ recipients. “Please note I will take care of my new buddy and remember why I can be normal again.”
After Sean’s death, a girl approached Cheryl Veirauch to say she had talked to Sean about getting her driver’s license and “Sean had mentioned to her that he was going to be an organ donor and that she should, too,” Cheryl said.
Paul Veirauch insists others should follow his son’s selfless example to help save the lives of people waiting for an organ transplant.
“It’s the best gift you can give,” he said. “You’re giving the gift of life. Don’t be afraid. Do it.”
