There is a phrase that says, “You only live once.” The phrase should be changed to, “You only die once, you live every day.” For Ray Freeman, that phrase became his reality when he almost died from kidney failure.
1981, the Warrensville Heights graduate was on top of the world. Ray won a football scholarship and attended Colorado State University. After graduating, he played in the National Football League with the Denver Broncos.
“When I got my first NFL check, I bought myself a grey Lincoln Continental and paid my mother’s house off,” Ray said proudly.
Ray had become known for caring about people and those around him. He has always excelled at anything he tried, and he was used to winning. To stay in shape, he continued to exercise and engage in sports until one day he struggled to breathe and noticed his energy was low.
“I was playing basketball one day and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get any wind,” he explained. “I couldn’t understand what was going on. My family recommended I go to the doctor to make sure I was OK.”
He wasn’t. When he visited the doctor, they noticed that his kidney function had dropped from 98 percent functioning to 96 percent. They agreed to pay closer attention to Ray’s health and continued to monitor his kidney function hoping it was just a minor fluctuation.
Six months later, Ray got violently sick and could barely stand or keep food down. His family rushed him to the hospital and learned that his kidney function had dropped to a low of 17 percent. The Freeman family was devastated. Ray had been an athlete his entire life. There is no history of kidney failure in this bloodline. They couldn’t understand what was going on.
Over the next three years, from 2010 to 2013, Ray would lose too much weight, go on dialysis, and struggle to maintain the quality of life he used to enjoy. He thought about his life and his death and had come to the realization that he might not live long enough to see his kid grow up.
It was recommended that he visit a local doctor in the area, Dr. Charles Modlin, to see if there was any opportunity to get on the kidney transplant list. Dr. Modlin was able to help Ray manage his health until a new kidney could be found but finding one would have to be soon because Ray’s health continued to deteriorate.
Several friends began to check to see if they were suitable donors. Finding a perfect match is difficult because there are so many factors involved in a body accepting an organ from someone else. To find the right kidney is hard; to find someone in Freeman’s circle to be a match was almost impossible.
Several friends tested to see if they could provide Ray with a kidney. To be a match, the person would have to have seven out of seven antigens needed for his body to not reject the organ.
Transplantation antigens are proteins expressed on the donor tissue that have the capacity to initiate an immune reaction against the allograft. In humans, this is known as the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system and over 17,000 HLA alleles or genetic variants have been described such that it is extremely uncommon for any two people to have identical alleles.
Several of Freeman’s friends came close, but only one was a perfect match. Felecia McDonald, a former girlfriend of Ray’s, got tested and found out that her kidney would work in his body. She agreed to do the procedure and Ray got a second chance at life.
“Words cannot express how grateful I am to Felecia for giving me one of her kidneys,” Ray said. “Life was hard on both of us at that time, but she put herself second and gave me a kidney. I knew that if I got a second chance I couldn’t waste it.”
And he hasn’t. Ray discovered that he has a passion for mentorship and decided that he would use that passion to change young lives. In 2015 Ray ran for a school board position at his former high school and won.
The win has turned into an incredible run for Ray who now holds several prestigious positions and recently became the chairman of the National Urban Boards Alliance-Consortium of State Schools Association. He is a proud member of one hundred Black Men of Greater Cleveland and sits on the board of Cleveland Clinic Southpointe Hospital.
“I saw our kids with sagging pants and horrible attitudes. I knew I could have an impact, so I put myself to work to make a difference,” Ray explained.
At the time, Warrensville City Schools struggled to compete, maintaining an F rating from the State of Ohio for performance. With the help of newly elected superintendent Donald Jolly, they started on a mission to bring the school up to where it belongs.
Today, the school district enjoys a positive rating, is in the process of building all new schools, and is a thriving place for motivated young kids. Those accomplishments are strong wins for Ray, who took advantage of his second opportunity in life.
These days, Ray is on a strict diet of no sugar or salt and takes sixteen pills a day to stay alive. He admits that there are times when he needs to take a break and let his body recover from his busy work schedule. “I know I need to rest more than I do, and when my body needs rest, it will tell me.”
