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Constable: Getting to the heart of Father's Day

By Bust Constable

Hearts are given away. Hearts swell with pride. Hearts break. Hearts are where we keep the special people in our lives. At age 66, St. Charles father George Laman celebrates Father's Day with a new heart that already is full. His original heart first gave Laman problems in summer 1997.

"I just got done cutting the grass and I was just walking into the garage when I passed out," Laman says. That first episode of ventricular tachycardia, a heart rhythm disorder caused by abnormal electrical signals, could have killed him if the jolt of hitting the floor hadn't made him regain consciousness. Laman, a Schaumburg firefighter and paramedic at the time, knew he urgently needed help. He crawled to a phone in the garage and called 9-1-1.

Paramedics saved his life by shocking his heart back into rhythm. Doctors discovered another heart problem and later installed a pacemaker and defibrillator in his chest. "If you can keep yourself alive, in about 18 or 20 years, you'll need a new heart," Laman remembers doctors telling him. Laman and his wife, Mary, were parents to sons Ryan, Matthew and Neal, and their youngest, daughter Lauren, who worried her father might die before she had a chance to grow up.

"I will do everything possible to see you graduate," Laman promised his little girl.

"You'll walk me down the aisle," Lauren responded.

The dad never got the chance to do either.

On Friday, Feb. 8, 2008, Lauren, 18, set to study dance at Northern Illinois University in the fall, was practicing with the St. Charles North drill team when she collapsed. The school had an automated external defibrillator, but it wasn't used until paramedics arrived. Laman, on his way to the wake for a friend's father when he got the phone call, rushed to the emergency room of the hospital.

"Having been a firefighter and a paramedic, I'm used to death," says the father, who knew that his daughter was gone even as a doctor continued resuscitation efforts. "I put my hands on his shoulder and I said, 'Doc. I know you've done everything you can. Please stop.'"

An autopsy blamed a sudden heart valve malfunction. The urn containing Lauren's ashes sits on the fireplace mantel in the Laman home. In the outpouring of sorrow, love and admiration for Lauren, the heartbroken Lamans vowed to do something.

"My wife said, 'Why don't we try to get a law passed?'" remembers Laman. With a bachelor's degree in history and political science, he had an idea how much work would be needed to pass a requirement that every school in Illinois teach CPR and how to use an automated external defibrillator, or AED.

"Watching him was like watching a superhero. He put the cape on and went to work," says son Matt Laman, now a 33-year-old father of two in Naperville.

"I contacted almost every state rep," George Laman says. "Lauren's Law" was spearheaded by Dean Burke, a Chicago Democrat who coincidentally shared a birthday with Lauren, and sponsored by Galesburg Republican Donald Moffit. The bill got union backing from the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois and won the support of health advocates and then-Gov. Pat Quinn.

"We got it passed in eight months," says George Laman.

Always fit from his days in the Navy, where he served on the last crew of the presidential yacht Sequoia in the 1970s, Laman knew his heart was failing. No longer physically able to be a firefighter, Laman moved to a desk job in Schaumburg's finance department. Poor circulation left him exhausted.

"I'd have a blue tinge in my face. I'd kid around with my kids and say that I was a Smurf," Laman remembers. "I would get up, go to work, take a nap in my car at lunch, come home, take a nap, eat, watch a little TV, and go to bed. I was dying."

In 2015, he saw Northwestern Medicine doctors, who put him on the heart-transplant list. "He was literally dying," remembers Dr. Allen S. Anderson, medical director of Northwestern's Center for Heart Failure and medical director for transplantation. Laman's form of cardiomyopathy was unpredictable.

Laman spent two months in Northwestern Memorial Hospital waiting for an organ that was healthy, large enough for his 6-foot-3 body and matched his rare O-negative blood type, His new heart was transplanted on Feb. 23, 2016, from a donor who was about 30 years old and had been somebody's child. "I know what it's like to lose a child," says Laman, who has reached out and hopes to hear from his donor's family some day.

As the father of a 15-year-old girl, Anderson understands Laman's thrill at being able to continue being a father and grandfather, even as he mourns Lauren. "This is why I do what I do," says Anderson, stressing the lifesaving transplants require a donor and then a team of transplant doctors and staff.

"This is the circle of life. You can only do what you can do," Anderson says, praising Laman for his advocacy work on behalf of organ donation, CPR and AEDs. "He's just a wonderful guy."

Now working as fire plans examiner for Schaumburg, Laman says his new heart is full - with joy for his family and four grandkids; with hope that Lauren's Law will continue to save lives; with thoughts of his daughter.

"If she had a choice of staying with her family or saving thousands of lives, she'd pick that latter," Laman says softly. "Someday we'll meet again."

  Sons and grandchildren hold a special place in the recently transplanted heart of George Laman of St. Charles. But he also makes room for the heartache of losing his daughter, Lauren, who died at age 18 in 2008. Mark Black/mblack@dailyherald.com
Three years after this 2005 family photo of Matt, Ryan Lauren, Neal, Mary and George Laman, left to right, Lauren died of a heart ailment at age 18. The life of George Laman was saved in 2016 by a heart transplant. Photo courtesy of Laman family
A member of the St. Charles North High School drill team, Lauren Laman collapsed and died in 2008. Her family responded by successfully pushing for a state law requiring all Illinois schools to teach students CPR and how to use automated external defibrillator devices, or AEDs. Photo courtesy of Laman family
Thriving after his recent heart transplant, St. Charles father George Laman says he'll always carry the memories of his daughter, Lauren, in his heart. She died at age 18 after collapsing during a drill team practice in 2008. Photo courtesy of Laman family
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