Barbara Rosser Merz and Glenn Merz both lost spouses to a rare lung disease, but found each other and a renewed sense of gratitude.<\/p>\n
When her husband, Vernon,\u00a0 received his lung transplant at Vanderbilt in 1997, Barbara Rosser started a support group for lung transplant families. The group met frequently, helped one another during difficult times and spoke to new transplant candidates. Glenn\u2019s wife, Joyce, received a new lung and joined the group in 1998.<\/p>\n
\u201cLittle did I know that the people in that first lung transplant support group would become my best friends and the group would grow so large and help so many,\u201d Rosser Merz said.<\/p>\n
After the death of Vernon in 2002 and then Joyce in 2003, their spouses found that they understood what the other had endured and each other\u2019s loss. Slowly their strong friendship grew into romance, and the two married in 2004.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt like Vernon and Joyce were pulling strings from above, trying to make sure we ended up together,\u201d Rosser Merz said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Vernon was close to dying, he kept telling me he wanted me to remarry Glenn. I told him I didn\u2019t want to hear any more about it. Vernon was best friends with Joyce who was also one of my best friends. We all went through so much together for so many years,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Every life saved through organ transplant also means a life has ended. Vernon Rosser had reached out to his donor\u2019s family and learned that their 20-year-old son had been killed by a drunk driver. Rosser Merz said the parents felt comfort that others could live through their son\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cVernon used to wonder why he got to live while another had to die. But there is no telling how many lives Vernon touched in the five and a half years after his transplant \u2014 through a warm hug, a ready smile and his enthusiastic promotion of organ donation which is needed by so many. It was his legacy,\u201d Rosser Merz said.<\/p>\n
The Merzs\u2019 gratitude and the legacy of their spouses is expressed in the scholarship they founded for the School of Medicine, the Barbara R. and Glenn H. Merz Scholarship. Barbara and Glenn Merz also recently completed a book about their journey, \u201cOur Story: The True Life Narrative of God\u2019s Plan for Us.\u201d The proceeds from the sale of the book go toward their scholarship fund.<\/p>\n
Blair Stocks, VUSM class of 2018, is one of the grateful MD\/PhD candidates supported by the Merz scholarship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am so thankful for this gift of a medical education. I hope to lead a transplantation laboratory that unravels the biology of immune regulation to improve transplant outcomes. Upon completion of Vanderbilt\u2019s MD\/PhD program, I plan to pursue a fellowship in transplant surgery followed by post-doctoral training in transplantation science,\u201d Stocks said.<\/p>\n
Glenn Merz says that transplant recipients inspire people with their thankfulness for another day of life and take nothing for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cCreating more doctors who can help improve the transplant process is our way of paying tribute to our spouses, who had so much to show us about how to really live and the power of faith and friends,\u201d Merz said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barbara Rosser Merz and Glenn Merz both lost spouses to a rare lung disease, but found each other and a renewed sense of gratitude. When her husband, Vernon,\u00a0 received his lung transplant at Vanderbilt in 1997, Barbara Rosser started a support group for lung transplant families. The group met frequently, helped one another during difficult…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[36,28,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-giving-in-action","category-vm-vanderbilt-community","category-vm-winter-2018"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-qs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3032,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions\/3032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}