Iowa woman's gratitude is a gift she gave others

DES MOINES, Iowa — Such gratitude overcame Emily Markert on Thanksgiving 15 years ago that it lives on today.

Two weeks ago, thousands of people nationwide saw her face on a car during a NASCAR race in Phoenix.

It was put there after Emily courageously faced many turns of bad luck and heartbreak, but mainly because of what Emily felt that day 15 years ago and most every day after.

"I've got everything to be thankful for," the then-17-year-old told a reporter for the Lawrence, Kan., newspaper from her hospital bed at the University of Southern California after two uncles donated parts of their lungs so she could breathe again. "I look at everything in a different way now, and think about how much my uncles gave up to help me."

She and her mother, Liz Markert, agreed that once they returned to Iowa, every day would be Thanksgiving.

And it was.

Emily was in her bed at home in Manson in August 2014. It was near the end, a glorious ride of dancing and running and living in the 15 years since the transplants that saved her life.

Her mom knew her 32-year-old daughter had done much, had lived by her creed ("dream big") and been grateful. Yet Emily turned to her and said: "I haven't done enough to raise awareness for organ donation."

She wanted to move ahead with that benefit 5-kilometer run that they had talked about to raise money for organ donation.

As Emily drifted further away over the next week, as hospice workers attended to her needs, her mom and her best friend, Abby Schmitz, worked the phones to plan the run. They knew she could hear them, but couldn't speak.

"We felt her working with us," Schmitz said. "We heard her voice: 'Make it a real 5K. And don't skimp on the T-shirts.'"

Emily ran track at in high school and helped the 3,200-meter relay team make the state meet in 1998.

So it was a cruel twist that a runner of such great lung capacity would be stricken with a form of pneumonia in the summer of 1999 that took away her ability to breathe.

At St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minn., nurses attended to her as bit by bit she lost lung function. Schoolmates traveled from Manson, Iowa, most weekends to have a sleepover at her bedside in the critical-care unit.

But Emily needed new lungs and was on a long waiting list for donors. That's when the family heard that living relatives could supply part of their lungs — at that time still a rarity — and a doctor at the hospital at USC could do the surgery.

Emily didn't waste time. She told her Schmitz that if she got a second chance at life, she was going to live it. Three months after the surgery, she danced with the drill team at high school, and three months after that ran in a track meet. By August, she participated in a 5K.

She was determined to do something with her gift and be grateful for it.

Every birthday, she lined up with her two uncles to have their pictures taken together. And every time she saw them, she thanked them.

She went to college, graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in dietetics in 2004, and went to work for the Iowa Department of Corrections in Fort Dodge.

When her lungs failed again in 2006, and she needed another transplant, she plowed forward. This time, she received new lungs from a donor who had passed away. Again, she took to the streets to run.

She and Schmitz dreamed up a plan barely a year after her surgery. Schmitz had qualified for the Boston Marathon, and persuaded race officials to let Markert finish the last mile with her.

Emily waited on the side. It was cloudy and rainy, Schmitz said, almost a metaphor for the storms her friend had been through, when the clouds parted as she approached. Emily spotted her friend and was so excited she burst into a run. Schmitz struggled to keep up with her exuberance.

"I wanted to yell into the crowd, 'You don't realize. Look at her here! She is running!'" Schmitz said.

"Who acts like that? Who is that tough? God put her here. She is a true, shining soul, who is helping so many people."

A year later, Emily got skin cancer, the first sign that medication she took for her new lungs might be weakening her immune system.

She fought through it, showing gratitude for her third chance at life.

She wrote a four-page letter of thanks to the family whose loved one had donated the lungs to her. She baked cookies with green ribbons on top and a note to "take a cookie to celebrate life with me. Live, Laugh, Love, Then Give!"

She wrote in her journal in October 2011 about meeting an offender in the prison who was listening to music on headphones. He asked Emily what song would describe her life.

"'Temporary Home,'" she responded.

"That bad?" he asked.

"No, but it is tough."

"My life is great," she wrote in the journal. "I love living although at times it is difficult. The song 'Temporary Home' talks about our time on Earth is just our temporary home, it's not where I belong. ... This is just a stop on the way to where I am going."

By last summer, the cancer had returned. It was in her liver and, within a couple of weeks, in her bones.

Emily was 5-foot-6 and always had beautiful brown hair. She kept prayer books in little plastic bags and had her mother read them to her, mouthing the words.

But she wasn't ready yet, even as she went home in August to die. She had one more thing to do.

The run would be called Emily's Fight: Donate Life.

On Aug. 15, Emily died.

Her family and friends decided to run the 5K anyway, only nine days later. Emily would have wanted it. Two hundred and fifty runners participated and raised $12,000. They handed every dollar over to the Iowa Donor Network.

The network decided to use it to memorialize her by buying space on the race car of Cedar Rapids driver. Gase's mom died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in April 2011, when he was 18. He made the decision to donate her organs and has been working to raise awareness ever since.

He would put Emily's face on the panel of the car right behind the driver, urging people to give life.

Liz Markert and Emily's brother, Kyle, attended the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in Chicago in September and in Kansas City in October, watching Emily's smiling face whizzing past.

"Emily used to run around the track," Liz Markert said. "Now she is racing around it."

Gase decided to keep her face on his car for the NASCAR race in Phoenix on Nov. 15.

Many have called the network since to ask about donating their organs.

The gratitude of Emily Markert is now her legacy. Others will get organs and new life because of her — and perhaps do the same with their second chance.