Twenty years ago, reporter Nancy Hicks wrote about Dan Cuda while he was on the "waiting list of a lifetime," awaiting a kidney transplant.
He got a life-saving transplant four months later.
This week, Cuda is in California participating in the Rose Parade and raising awareness about the need for organ donations.
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Look for Dan Cuda in the Rose Parade on Wednesday morning.
He’ll be waving from the rose-covered “Light up the World†float as it winds through Pasadena, Calif.
Cuda, 68, is one of 42 people selected to represent transplant recipients and donors nationwide.
He and his wife, Jeanne, have been on both sides of the organ transplant equation.
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They donated their 7-year-old son Bradley’s kidneys and corneas after he was hit by a van and killed while walking home from Prescott Elementary in 1985.
Dan Cuda still chokes up talking about the boy, who never got a chance to grow up, and the organ donations that gave the couple some solace in the midst of tragedy.
Twenty-two years later, they got a letter from the woman who received one of Bradley’s kidneys, an 18-year-old college freshman at the time of the transplant who went on to marry and have three children.
When Bradley died, the Cudas were unaware that just a few years later Dan would be on the receiving end of the transplant equation. Donating their boy’s organs just seemed the natural and right thing to do.
Two years after their son's death, Dan Cuda received a kidney after his were destroyed by an inherited disorder, polycystic kidney disease. It was the same disease that destroyed the kidneys of their son’s kidney recipient.
And the kidney, a three-point match on a six-point scale, has served him well, he says. He has seen his children grow up, has played with his six grandchildren and is watching the next generation get started: four great-grandchildren and another on the way.
He continues to work — part time now that he’s almost 69 — as a real estate appraiser. And he volunteers for both the Nebraska Kidney Association and the Nebraska Organ Retrieval System.
In fact, he thought those groups were recruiting him to do more locally when three friends invited him to lunch.
But what they offered was a four-day, expenses-paid vacation in California and the opportunity to be on the national Donate Life float in the Rose Parade.
Riders must be transplant recipients; walkers will be living organ donors.
The Cudas have been getting email updates on the float and on the publicity generated by the participants. The publicity, of course, is part of the purpose of the float — to encourage others to sign organ donor cards.
Nearly 120,000 Americans and their families are waiting for life-saving organ transplants, while every year hundreds of thousands of people need donated tissue to prevent or cure blindness, heal burns or save limbs. Millions more benefit from blood donations, according to literature from Donate Life.
Cuda has a 6- to 8-inch scar and takes a handful of pills daily as the result of his transplant, a small price for a long life.
Kidney transplants are much easier on the patient today. Now, the surgery is generally laparoscopic, with three small incisions. The drugs that suppress the immune system continue to get better and often people who get kidneys from close relatives take no medicine long term.
Cuda got his kidney on Nov. 3, 1993. Twice before, he had gotten the call that a kidney might be available. The first time, someone ahead of him on the list got it — someone who had been called to the hospital 22 times but had yet to get a kidney.
Cuda figured it was the other guy's turn.
The second time the call came while he was getting ready to go to a wedding. He was second on the list; No. 1 got that kidney.
Cuda got the third call. “We have a kidney; it’s yours. Get here as soon as you can.â€
Jeanne Cuda, a real estate agent, was showing a house. She called him to pick up the pizza.
“Forget the pizza. I’m going to Omaha,†he told her.
His kidney was recovered in Omaha but went to Boston, where it was deemed a mismatch, then to Dallas-Fort Worth. Also a mismatch.
By the time it got back to Omaha it had been out of the donor's body for three days, but it still started working immediately.
Usually, people’s own kidneys atrophy after they get a transplant. Cuda’s didn’t. Later, doctors would remove them and discover cancer in one. The cancer was confined to the kidney and nothing else came of it.
Dan Cuda has written several letters to relatives of his organ donor, but they don’t want contact, which he says is fine if contact is painful for them. He just wants to express his gratitude.
The Cudas, who are spending a few months this winter in Arizona, flew to Pasadena on Sunday to help build the float.
The float is five enormous lamps, adorned with 81 memorial floragraph portraits of deceased donors whose legacies of life shine brightly.
The riders will be seated throughout a dedication garden filled with thousands of roses bearing personal messages of love, hope and remembrance.
It looks like they’ll have good weather for the parade.
So look for Dan. He’ll be waiving, hoping you already said “yes†to the organ donor question on your driver’s license.
If not, you can register as a donor at .