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Tampa Minister's New Kidney Is Godsend From Congregant

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By MICHELLE BEARDEN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 11, 2008

Updated: 01/10/2008 11:12 pm

TAMPA - One day after his transplant surgery, the Rev. Julius Wynn knew just where he was going to take his first walk.

"Down the hall to Martha Kitchen's room," he said Thursday from Tampa General Hospital. "I need to thank her again."

Kitchen is a member of Highland Missionary Baptist Church, where Wynn serves as pastor. She donated one of her healthy kidneys to her minister, whose end stage renal disease has required 10 1/2 hours of nightly peritoneal dialysis since October 2005.

Rebekah Arsenault of the Tampa-based LifeLink Foundation, a nonprofit organization that coordinates organ and tissue donations, called Wednesday's surgery for both patients a success.

"Everything went great," she said. "He's going to be able to live a normal life again."

The story of the congregant's gift was reported in the BayLife section of Sunday's Tribune.

Kitchen, 38, a divorced mother of three, said she was moved by her pastor's courage and his determination to keep working, despite his deteriorating health. Wynn, 44, also a father of three, serves his East Tampa church and works as assistant principal at Palm Harbor Middle School.

No one of age in his family could provide a compatible kidney, so Wynn was one of an estimated 98,000 people nationwide waiting for an organ donor. In Florida alone, about 2,800 await a kidney.

One Sunday last fall, Wynn left the pulpit briefly and went outside, where he was violently ill. He collected himself and returned to the sanctuary to continue his sermon.

That's when Kitchen, a lab tech with Quest Diagnostics, made the decision to do anything she could to help him. Without telling anyone, she had herself tested - and found out several weeks later that she was a compatible donor.

Although she had known Wynn only a few years, Kitchen said she felt it was the right thing to do.

"I'm ready to give him life," she told the Tribune in late December. "So he can see his children graduate, go to college, be married. And so he can have a better life himself."

Wynn faces about three months of recovery from the transplant, while his donor should take about two months to recover. She also should be able to live a normal life with just one kidney.

"I am so blessed. Words really can't express my gratitude to her," Wynn said. "As soon as I'm able, I will do everything in my power to get the word out about the need for donors."

Kitchen was resting Thursday. Donors typically have a little more difficulty in the few first days after surgery.

Her sister, Nadine Stewart, was by Kitchen's bedside at Tampa General. She said she wasn't surprised that her younger sibling made such a generous gift to her pastor.

"She's a loving and giving person," Stewart said. "That's the way she's always been."

Michelle Bearden can be reached at mbearden@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7613.

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