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A miracle kidney match for Missouri racer, mom
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Brennon Willard and his mother Sandy Willard. (Carson Elliott photo)
When the auto racing community in July embraced Brennon Willard's desperate search for a kidney donor for his mother, the 40-year-old Dirt Late Model racer from Lebanon, Mo., was heartened as shared Facebook posts produced 16 candidates.
Dirt racer and former NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace, Springfield (Mo.) Raceway owner Jerry Hoffman, Ernie Leftwich of the Lucas Oil Midwest LateModel Racing Association along with Chris and Jack Sullivan of the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series were among those whose posts helped find potential donors. | Slideshow
As it turns out, none of the 16 were needed when an unexpectedly perfect donor suddenly appeared — Brennon himself.
Unaware he could possibly be a match for 71-year-old Sandy Willard because of confusion over blood types, when Brennon on a whim explored the transplant program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., it became apparent he could provide a life-changing kidney.
The family was surprised in part because, 11 years after Bradley and Sandy Willard married, they'd adopted Brennon. While biological children typically have a 50 percent chance of matching a parent for kidney donation, neither Brennon nor his adopted sister Andee share genes with his mother, who has struggled with kidney problems since she was in her 40s. A physician at Mayo told Brennon his chances of being a match with his mother was less than 3 in 100.
The tight-knit family knows it’s a miracle.
"Never in a million years did I think that Brennon would be able to be a donor," said Sandy Willard, whose three-times-a-week dialysis schedule leaves her sickened and exhausted. "I said, 'Brennon, you don't have to do this,' because he has a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old. And he said, 'Mom, I pray every day for you to get a kidney. What kind of Christian would I be if I said, even though we're a match, I'm not going to give her a kidney?' So that's the way Brennon is. All three of (my) kids are very giving kids."
With the transplant surgery scheduled for Sept. 18, Willard's Labor Day weekend competition on the Lucas Oil Midwest LateModel Racing Association at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., and Moberly (Mo.) Motorsports Park — his best finish came Saturday with a seventh-place performance — will likely be his last for a few months. In early September he'll park his Longhorn Chassis and spend time getting things in order to take a few weeks off at Willard Asphalt, the family-owned business he operates with his younger brother Blane, the Willards' biological son whose health prevented him from being a donor candidate.
Multitime MARS Championship Series and Lucas Oil Midwest LateModel Racing Association champion Tony Jackson Jr., who grew up with Brennon in Lebanon and has been a longtime racing buddy, is hopeful all goes well with a transplant that can give Sandy Willard her life back.
“There's maybe a little fear in everybody of something going wrong or not being right" when committing to organ donation, Jackson said. "But I think being that it’s his mom and he sees what she's had to go through, and just how her everyday life can't be 100 percent, I don't think it was ever a question whether he was going to do it or not."
His parents had reservations, but Brennon was determined to convince them that this is the way Sandy’s health struggles are supposed to end.
"As soon as I told my mom and dad that I was like, 'Hey, I filled that (donor registration) out,' and they're like, 'Well, you're not doing this,’ ” Brennon recalled.
"You don't get to ask God for a miracle and then get it presented to you like, oh, here, I found you a kidney" — and then turn it down, Brennon told them. "It don't work that way."
Brennon's father Bradley, himself a former racer who previously operated the family's I-44 Speedway that his father Bill Willard founded in 1982, is anxious for Sandy to resume her role as “MeMe" to 10 grandchildren.
"She wants to be grandma again. She can't do it the way it is because she just don't feel good. All the kids have learned to walk in to see if grandma is sleeping. If she's sleeping, don't wake her,” the 74-year-old Bradley said. "So it's time. She’s been in pain long enough."
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Over the last 25 years, chronic kidney issues plagued Sandy amid several hospitalizations for kidney stones and infections. Her condition worsened with the discovery of an autoimmune disease that triggered more serious problems the winter of 2019-20. She spiraled into crises complicated by Covid-19 disruptions, in and out of hospitals in Missouri and Kansas. With her kidneys filled with hundreds of stones, the dire situation eventually landed her on the transplant list.
Sandy nearly died when she faced a January 2022 bout with Covid — Brennon flew home from his Speedweeks racing trip to East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton, Fla., when “they didn’t think she was going to make it” — but she recovered, only to begin a grueling dialysis schedule that ground life to a halt.
"I'm doing good — it's not a dialysis day,” she said during a recent Sunday phone call. “So when I don't get dialysis, it's a good day.
"In the last four years, I haven't done much. I don't go grocery shopping or where I have to be out in public. I go usually from dialysis to home and I wear a mask the whole time I'm at dialysis.”
Brennon says she’s had “zero quality of life” amid her treatment schedule at Lebanon’s Fresenius Kidney Care. Three days a week she leaves home at 6:30 a.m. for an eight-minute ride to the clinic, receives the four-hour treatment and is home by late morning, sleeping much of the rest of the day, enduring diarrhea among other discomforts.
"She just can't travel, just can't do anything,” Brennon said. “She has had no quality of life for four years basically. Just has to sit at home. So it's been miserable.”
Bradley, who owns Willard Asphalt while managing the family’s farm of 1,200 cows and nearly 400 acres of corn, has added caretaker to his duties for long days that begin at 5:30 a.m.
“It's been life-changing. Sandy's had no life for four years,” her husband said. “Going to dialysis and being sick for two days and then going back — she goes Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday — and on Tuesday she's deathly sick, and comes home and sleeps.
"You can be perfectly fine and energetic and walking into the dialysis unit, and when you walk out four hours later, it's just your life is drained from you. So the only thing you can do is sleep, then you sleep through four hours and then she gets better, a little better, and then the next day she's OK. And then you go back and start over.”
The path to a transplant has been neither quick nor easy. Evaluated at the Mayo Clinic early in 2023, Sandy's heart was so damaged by Covid and a regimen of steroids that she wasn't eligible for a transplant. Her health improved enough in October 2023 to achieve transplant eligibility, but a promising match fell through in January 2024 when the donor failed a kidney function test.
It was back to square one.
With no progress this spring or summer, Brennon made a desperate plea on Facebook in mid-July following a virtual visit with a physician at Mayo, hoping to find someone with A-positive blood type. He was grateful the racing community rallied around his posts, and even though his A-negative blood type didn’t match Sandy’s, Brennon decided to explore his donorship possibilities.
“When I get on this phone call with Mayo, they’re going through this whole thing, and I said, ‘I’m probably wasting your time because I’m A-negative blood,’ ” Brennon recalled. “They said, ‘You’re not wasting our time. It doesn’t matter if you’re A-negative or A-positive, if it’s A to A, it’ll work.’ ”
With a blood-type match a promising start, Brennon began the extensive testing process with Mayo for further matching of antigens and to make sure his health was top-notch. His doctor told him typically 15 percent of candidate meet the healthiness level required. Testing included multiple phone questionnaires, a three-day visit to Minnesota in mid-August to evaluate his compatibility and finally heart tests in Springfield.
“Worst-case scenario, when you sign up to go be a living donor, you get a really good physical,” Brennon said. “They literally take 22 vials of blood and run all these tests. There was 41 tests, I think, total in that process on that test deal. It was insane. You're just in doctor's appointments all day, every day.”
During the process, the Mayo physicians asked Brennon a difficult question: Would he donate his kidney regardless of whether he matched with his mother? He said yes to what’s called a paired exchange.
“What this got sped up was, if I was willing — and if my mom and I didn't match — if I was willing to give a kidney to a random person (it would) basically almost guarantee that my mom's gonna get somebody else's kidney that would be a better match,” he said. "So I agreed to do that. So basically, once I did that, they really sped me up because they knew they were getting my kidney if I could pass these tests.”
Brennon, 5-foot-9 and a trim 145 pounds, was leery of overconfidence, but nothing throughout his examinations ruled him out.
"I don't wanna get anybody's hopes up, you know what I mean? But when I left to get tested, my preacher was like, 'Hey, if you don't pass, I don't know who will, because you look like you're in really good health,’ ” Brennon said. "I actually watch what I eat and, like, try to eat pretty good and I actually do pay attention to my health. So I kept being cautiously optimistic."
Doctors were more optimistic, and after he completed the battery of tests, there was fantastic news — he could be a living donor for his mother.
"A bunch of stuff has happened really damn quick,” Brennon said. “So obviously, I jumped on the chance to get her a kidney.”
When his parents learned of the news, Sandy bawled with joy. "I said he didn't have to do it, but his faith, he's decided that that's what God would want him to do,” Sandy said.
“When he found out that she was actually gonna get his (kidney),” Jackson said, “that probably made it OK with him that he knew that was the right thing to do.”
Brennon, who attends First Baptist Church in Lebanon, calls the episode a “God thing” in that his adopted status played a role. His younger brother Blane, the Willards’ biological child born six years after Brennon, was a likelier match but wasn’t a realistic candidate because he's shown early signs of kidney disease. Brennon, with no biological connection to his parents, turned out to be an ideal candidate.
“I've learned a lot about this kidney donation deal (so) being adopted," Brennon said, "not having that gene — the bad genetics — helped tremendously.”
Added his father: “It’s just a miracle that Brennon is compatible.”
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Racing is woven into the Willard family’s fabric with Bradley’s father Bill building the popular I-44 Speedway that’s operated alternately as an asphalt and dirt track for more than 40 years with standout drivers Larry Phillips, Billy Moyer and Carl Edwards among its famed winners.
Bradley raced on dirt and asphalt through his 30s, then operated the track with his brother until it became a financial drain. Brennon began his racing career on asphalt and logged eight victories before switching to Dirt Late Models several years ago, often pitting alongside and collaborating with the multitime series champion Jackson, who he’s known since they were young boys.
Racing is also woven into the fabric of the search for Sandy’s kidney donor. Along with the Facebook posts shared in July, Brennon was able to learn his blood type after recalling that years earlier he’d donated blood at the Ozarks Area Racers Hall of Fame to help the ailing family member of an inductee.
And Willard’s racing connections recently put him in touch with former NASCAR driver Todd Kluever of Wisconsin, who’d donated a kidney to his brother earlier this year. Brennon made a side trip to visit Kluever during his testing at the Mayo Clinic, and he "told me everything I'm gonna go through” during the process.
“It’s funny how racing’s kind of helped us out,” Brennon said.
His parents’ initial reservations about him donating a kidney revolved partly around Brennon's son Braden and daughter Ellasyn, in case they needed a kidney someday, and partly around concerns regarding the long-term viability of Brennon’s remaining kidney.
Those concerns were alleviated for two reasons. By the time his kids are in their late 20s, Brennon would be too old to donate a kidney. Secondly, living donors receive special National Kidney Registry treatment if their lone remaining kidney fails.
“They make sure that you get one because you've already given up a good one,” Brennon said. “So they'll move you to the top of the list. So it's nice to have that assurance.”
With his remaining kidney, Brennon can look forward to living a "completely normal life.” He’ll make a few minor diet changes and avoid ibuprofen, but otherwise life will go on.
The Sept. 18 transplant surgery will be somewhat unusual in that Sandy’s kidneys will be removed. Sandy has bacteria embedded in her failing kidneys that could threaten to contaminate the transplanted organ, she said.
"Both of her kidneys are completely full of stones, and actually when they do the surgery, normally they just leave your kidney in there and then it'll kind of just go away,” Brennon said. “They have to take both of her kidneys out and put mine in there because hers are so bad.”
Doctors told the Willards the transplant success rate is 98-99 percent.
“They say she'll be a new person the next day after the transplant,” Bradley said. “Now they're not gonna be out of the hospital (immediately). We should be in intensive care for a week and then be at Mayo's clinic for a month. And they'll test her blood every day to make sure the kidney is functioning as it should, and they'll leave the dialysis ports in until they make sure the kidney is working good.”
Bradley has been a champ throughout Sandy’s illness, Brennon said, but the recovery period won’t be easy on him, either.
“The only thing I'm worried about with my dad is him sitting in a hotel for 30 days in Minnesota because my dad runs his farm and works seven days a week, 74 years old and works seven days a week. Like he's a workaholic,” Brennon said. “So him not being able to work and do what he wants to do is gonna be interesting. He'll learn to relax.”
After the surgery, Brennon will likely be released from the hospital relatively quickly, but he’ll be off work for a few weeks. It will be another few months before he’ll be able to climb into the new Longhorn Chassis he recently ordered, but he hopes to compete in November at Springfield Raceway’s season-ending Turkey Bowl. Kluever gave Brennon the real-world rundown of his recovery.
"He said it's no big deal, but you’re not gonna be doing much for a couple weeks,” Brennon said. “I’m like, oh, that's fine. Like I thought I would just be a week (recovering) and be ship-shape — and I might be — but like, basically you gotta stay on your pain meds.”
A return to health on the horizon, Sandy is grateful for a supportive family.
"My husband has been great (and the children) call me all the time and they come by the house to see me because they know that I don't get out,” she said. "At Christmas, we have a big Christmas here and the holidays, we make a big deal of holidays. The week before Thanksgiving we go down and rent a house near Branson so all the kids can be with us.”
The family’s generous spirit is well known in Lebanon, Jackson said, so Brennon’s generosity doesn’t surprise his buddy.
“That's just how he is and, and not so much him only, but the Willard family, honestly,” Jackson said. “Most people relate the Willards to racing and they’ve done a whole lot of helping racing people and racetracks and whatnot, but they’re also just a good family and good people all around.”
Sandy calls her older son “a blessing from Day One.” She's overwhelmed by his sacrifice.
"I have just felt like my husband and I have been blessed forever, and whether it was when I had Covid and I thought I was gonna die to going through dialysis until now,” Sandy said. “I haven't been afraid. I think that things will work out the way they're supposed to.”
