Still full of life, wisdom

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Still full of life, wisdom
Kecoughtan's John Greene will spend his retirement focusing on the things that matter most, thanks to a transplant.

By Melinda Waldrop

247-4634

June 15, 2008

HAMPTON

It still makes Rosie Greene cry.

In September 2005, she was sitting in a hospital waiting room as her husband, John Greene, was being prepped for cataract surgery.

Her cell phone rang, and she scrambled to answer it. She had to keep it on, in defiance of posted signs, because there was always a chance it would be the call.

This call.

The one that would ease years of suffering, for John and for Rosie.

The one telling her that a kidney had become available for John.

"Oh, my gosh, I cried," she said. "Thinking about it makes me cry."

John Greene, 58, who retired this year after 30 seasons at Kecoughtan High School, was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 14. Over time, the disease took its toll, costing him the little toe on his right foot in 2001 and eventually requiring him to endure five hours of dialysis three times a week for four years to help his ravaged kidneys filter his blood.

That didn't keep John from working, teaching health and physical education and coaching baseball.

"I always looked at it like, OK, I wanted to teach, and I wanted to coach, so how do we get around it and do it?" John Greene said. "I looked at the people around me that were in the dialysis center, and I said 'I don't want to be like that.' I know some of them left dialysis and went home to bed, and that was it."

From 2001 until his kidney transplant in 2005, Rosie drove John to the dialysis center at 6 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. A machine removed toxins from his blood while he tried to sleep until 11 a.m., when Rosie drove him to Kecoughtan, to teach or to coach — or both.

"I think that was good for him, to keep working," Rosie said.

Rosie didn't mind the demands that came with John's job.

She helped plan a wedding for her middle son, David, around baseball season, and accepted that long summer getaways were something for other families. But grandsons, like oldest son Kevin's two boys, grow up fast, and life stops being about how much you can fit in and becomes about how much you have to savor.

"When you've got two grandsons, you want to be around them," John said. "I really wanted to (work) one more year, and my wife kind of helped convince me. She said, 'John, just let it go. There are other things to do.' "

A LONG FIGHT
Rosie Davis first laid eyes on John Greene when he was playing Little League baseball with her brother, Tommy. But John didn't make much of an impression until he showed up at her parents' house years later to play drums in Tommy's band.

"Everybody wore starched shirts, and John was always really neat," Rosie said.

John asked Rosie out when he was a junior and she was a sophomore at Hampton High. On their first date, they went to a basketball game.

"I liked sports," Rosie said. "Good thing, huh?"

"That was one of the best parts about it," John said. "You could relate."

The two dated throughout college, when John went to Christopher Newport and Rosie to Longwood. They married after they graduated.

Both taught school, and John played drums in a top-40 band to help support his family — Kevin, now 30, David, 28, and Allison, 23.

Diabetes, a word John Greene first heard at 14 to explain his sudden weight loss, was always a part of the family's lexicon.

"You're just aware of it," Rosie said. "We dated a long time before I ever saw him have a reaction or get low (blood sugar) or anything like that."

When that happens, "you don't exactly know what's going on," John said. "It's almost like you're incoherent. You're standing there, but you're babbling. You're saying things over and over and over again."

Bethel baseball coach Brett Wheeler, who played for Greene as an eighth-grader and spent his first year of coaching as an assistant on Greene's staff, saw something strange happen one day while Greene was hitting balls during infield practice.

"He threw the ball up and swung and missed like five times, and said the same thing," Wheeler said. "The guys were like, 'Coach! Go get him!' "

A quick dose of sugar, from the jelly beans Greene usually kept in his pocket or the canned sodas stashed in the dugout, and everything was fine.

Kecoughtan coaches and players also were armed with Rosie's telephone number, though she was usually just a few rows back in the stands, keeping the Warriors' scorebook and a close eye on her husband.

"Her favorite question is, 'What's your blood sugar?' " John said. " 'Did you take it before you left school?' And I only live right across the street."

Wheeler and former players said Greene's diabetes never got in the way of his coaching abilities.

But Greene knows the disease has had an impact.

"I remember when my doctor told me when I was about 25, he said if you reach 50, you're gonna feel like you're 70, probably, and sometimes I do," Greene said. "It's tough. Out here (in practice), I don't catch anymore, because it's hard to keep up with a baseball."

A complication of diabetes is retinopathy, a condition that causes blood vessels in the eye to clog with excess sugar. New vessels grow, but they block the refraction of light off the retina.

In a 12-11 loss to Gloucester this year, Greene said he misjudged whether a runner could score from second base.

"I've made mistakes before and cost us runs, but that was based on what I didn't see very well," he said.

Greene's eyesight won't get better, and may get worse.

Blindness is an ever-present threat, and would have happened by now, Greene said, without multiple laser surgeries.

There are other worries looming.

Greene has suffered bouts of skin cancer, to which the 16 anti-rejection pills he takes daily make him more susceptible. The drugs also weaken his immune system, leaving him more vulnerable to viruses and infection.

He also needs a new pancreas, which manufactures the body's insulin. He hopes to be put on a transplant list soon.

"I'm almost at an age where I'm too old to get the transplant," he said. "I think they have to look at you like, 'Is this guy a good candidate? Is it worth it?' I think I'm worth it, obviously. I've told my doctor, 'Let's do it.' I'll try it. I might be the kind of guy right now where I'm the guinea pig, like, 'Hey, this guy Greene will try it. Let's give it a shot.' "

A new pancreas would let Greene dispense with the last visible sign of his diabetes.

A small insulin pump the size of a cell-phone case sits on his right hip. Every three days, he finds a new injection site for a thin, plastic-covered needle, which hardly resembles the much larger ones he used to sterilize on the stove back in the early days of his disease.

"Wouldn't that be something?" he said. "They put something in me, and all of a sudden, I don't have to do it anymore. I don't even have to watch my diet."

Not that he's complaining.

That's not in his nature, and it's impossible when he compares his everyday life now to the one that revolved around five-hour dialysis treatments. Greene wants to find the family of his kidney donor — a 20-year-old killed in a motorcycle accident — and try to put that freedom into words.

"If they understand what dialysis is, that's where I'd start," Greene said. "I'm not at dialysis three times a week. I'm not hooked up to a machine doing the work of what everybody else's kidneys are doing."

For that, Greene has both his unknown donor and Chris Lantz to thank.

Lantz, who was once married to Greene's niece, was tested to see if he could donate a kidney to Greene. Factors such as blood type and the size of the organ needed determine whether a would-be donor is a match.

Greene had refused to allow his children to be tested, and was dumbstruck when several fellow teachers volunteered to do so if necessary.

"When he was on dialysis, somebody wanted to do a newspaper article, and he said no, because that was like asking for a kidney, and that was very difficult," Rosie said. "Somebody wanted to send out an e-mail to the school system, and he said no. He was just very uncomfortable with it."

But he couldn't stop Lantz from resolving to help, even after Lantz didn't turn out to be a match for Greene. Lantz donated his kidney anyway, to a stranger. That moved John's name up on the transplant list through a program at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital that awards points to a person when an organ is donated in his or her name.

"I really didn't have any second thoughts about it," Lantz said. "It's helping somebody else out and it's helping him, so it just kind of worked out that way, and it really worked out well, because he got his a week later."

Greene describes the transplant, which kept him out of work for seven weeks and left him with a 6-inch scar, like a kid in awe of his award-winning science project. "They open you up (and) slide that guy in," leaving the old, atrophied kidneys in place, he said.

He can't help but turn serious, though, when thinking about people, including some he knows, who may never go through a similar experience.

"There were people in that dialysis center that had been in there 15 to 20 years, and I'm thinking, 'Oh my gosh, how lucky can a person get?' " John Greene said. "I mean, really. And how do you say thank you? All you can say is thank you."

THE NEXT CHAPTER
When John Greene first put on his coach's uniform, he hadn't played baseball, and he'd never coached anything.

"I went to other coaches and said, 'What am I doing? What do I need to be doing?' " Greene said.

Greene was one of several JV coaches in Buddy Denton's 27-year tenure in charge of Kecoughtan's varsity program.

"I always felt like Johnny was able to get along well with the kids," Denton said. "If he had some decent players to coach, I felt like he knew what to do with them."

Slowly, Greene learned along with his players. But when Kecoughtan's varsity job opened 13 years ago, he wasn't sure he should apply.

"I didn't know if I was that competitive, and probably I don't even know if I'm still that competitive," he said. "I just like the game and I like being around it."

While Greene's Kecoughtan teams have had their share of success, he freely volunteers that his career record is probably below .500, and this year's Warriors went 1-18.

"Everybody likes to win," Greene said "You also have to learn how to lose sometimes, too."

Greene taught his players that, and much more.

"He was like a father to me when I was in high school," said Eddie VanEs, a former Warrior now playing with the Peninsula Pilots. "He pushes you to make sure you're gonna be successful in life instead of just in baseball."

During VanEs' last practice as a senior, John Greene came up to him.

"He said, 'Hey man, it's been a fun run, and I wish you the best. You've done nothing but bring this program up,' " VanEs said. "I looked at him and said, 'I wouldn't be where I am without you.' That moment, I'll remember, and hopefully if I start coaching, that's the same thing I can do for my players."

Greene's influence even extended to his competitors.

Longtime Hampton baseball coach Danny Mitchell, who grew up playing Little League baseball against Greene, remembers his underdog Crabbers upsetting a senior-laden Kecoughtan team a few years ago in the Peninsula District tournament.

"I felt kind of bad that we beat him," Mitchell said. "That's the first time I ever felt that way."

Greene is a man of small, unassuming stature. His lively eyes crinkle when he talks about baseball, former players or Rosie, but shutter when conversation turns to his health problems. He doesn't feel sorry for himself, and he doesn't want anyone else to, either.

"John Greene is probably one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet," Wheeler said. "He's a first-class guy and he cares about the kids, (and) he's so positive all the time. His guys could've played a bad game, and he's gonna pick everything good about the game. That's one thing that I've taken with me coaching — don't always dwell on the negatives."

Kevin Greene, who played junior varsity for his dad, has also absorbed wisdom from his father, albeit through osmosis.

"He doesn't sit you down and say, 'Now son, listen. This is a lesson I want to teach you,' " Kevin said. "But I think what I've learned from him is you've got to find things that you like to do, and then just do them. He likes teaching, and he taught — elementary-school kids, middle-school kids, high school students. He liked baseball, and so he coached 30 years. He liked music, so he played in the band. And so I think that's what he'll find (in retirement). He'll find new ways to do what he likes."

That will include spending lots of time with Jacob, his 3-year-old grandson, and 5-month-old Brady.

On the last Saturday in May, John and Rosie were heading with Kevin, his wife, Becky, and their boys to Busch Gardens — a trip that would've had to be scheduled around dialysis in the past, or postponed because of a baseball game. Greene was having a dialysis treatment when Jacob was born.

Now, the Greenes can plan more excursions, like the one the family took to Yankee Stadium on John's 50th birthday.

Like she was when the two saw an Eagles concert in Charlottesville last month, Rosie will be behind the wheel. Because of his vision problems, John only drives his white truck with the KHS BSBL plates to and from school.

"Good Lord, I don't know what I would do without her," John said.

Though Rosie is hoping for "the nicest yard on the whole street," Greene won't be entirely occupied with honey-do lists. He'll help coach football in the fall, working with the Warriors' kickers, and he'll offer whatever advice he can when a new baseball coach is hired — if he's asked. And if you can't find him on a summer Saturday, he'll probably be mowing the outfield grass.

"I'll be over here watching baseball games, if nothing else," he said. "I'll watch practice, even if I'm not helping. You don't leave this like that. You can't. You've got to be around it somehow."

Copyright © 2008, Newport News, Va., Daily Press

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