Living Thanks: 'It had to be love for him to do this'

[okarol]

Published: 06:12 AM, Mon Nov 23, 2009

Living Thanks: 'It had to be love for him to do this'

By Michael Futch
Staff writer

PARKTON - Turns out they were a perfect match.

Leona Taylor was the country girl with the dimples, standing in the doorway in the background of his buddy's picture.

Joseph Kyle was a soldier stationed in Saudi Arabia, wondering about the woman he'd never met and could barely discern.

Kyle would come home from war, meet the woman in the photograph, court her and marry her. And, in a sacrifice of love, the Illinois-born Yankee with a passion for motorcycles would eventually donate one of his kidneys to this good-hearted Southerner guided by faith.

"I already told her, I can't sue her. I can't get it back. She better treat it well," said Joseph, the joker of the two.

"Right now, the way I feel, all I see is the glory of God in it," added Leona, happy to play the straight person in their relationship.

"It just shows so much love. It had to be love for him to do this. God gave me, through him, this kidney."

"Honey," he piped in, "you're bringing tears to my eyes."

This time, Joseph wasn't joking.

The Kyles live in a subdivision on the edge of the small Robeson County town of Parkton. Joseph, who is 55, is retired after 22 years in the Army. Leona is 54. Before she got sick, she worked at Dodger Industries, a textile manufacturer, but she's now on disability.

During an interview, the couple sat in their living room. Joseph calls it "the no-touch room" because his wife proclaimed the sofas and chairs off limits unless guests are over.

Joseph said they haven't had two arguments since they married.

"He's a sweetie. He's a sweetheart. Sometimes, they're like two kids," said Mattie Daniely, who has known Leona for more than 30 years. "Leona is a devout Christian. Back in the day, she wanted a Christian husband. Somebody to love her. We had prayed for a husband. She met Kyle, and that was it. God just matched them together. A perfect match."
'I think that's fate'

Joseph's buddy got the picture back in 1991, around the time of the first Gulf War. The picture was really of the buddy's wife and three kids. Leona, a friend of the wife, was just in the background.

But that vague impression of Leona burned an image in Joseph's mind.

"When you see someone in a screen window, from a photograph that's taken about eight feet away - I couldn't see who she was, but I could see an outline of her," he said. "You can't really see that person and you end up marrying them two years later. I think that's fate. That's karma."

Leona was leery of men. Because of her deep religious convictions, she assumed that when they looked at her, they did so only with sinful desire.

But once she met Joseph, his sweetness won her over.

"When we first met, he was good. He was nice," Leona said. "One day, we went to this restaurant and I happened to look up. And I looked at his eyes, and it looked like somebody just took a bucket of love and just poured it all down in my heart. That's how it felt, and ever since then, I'm in love with him."
Giving God credit

For nearly the past decade, Leona has lived with sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease of unknown origin that affects various organs in the body. Her brother, Willie Taylor, also copes with the sometimes deadly disease.

In the beginning, the sarcoidosis penetrated her lungs, causing her to cough up blood.

Five years ago, she learned her kidneys were in the final stages of failure. She qualified for the National Kidney Registry, and her doctors told her she would have to go on dialysis.

When Joseph was tested, his blood and tissue type made him a candidate to donate. Although it isn't unheard of, it is unlikely, doctors say. Even siblings have only a 25 percent chance of being a match.

Leona sees it as a gift from God.

"They were a match in more than one way," said Daniely, who, too, gives God the credit for putting Joseph and Leona together.

On Aug. 24, Leona received her husband's kidney in a procedure at Duke University Medical Center in Durham. Leona and Joseph were prepped at the same time. A complication had arisen earlier, when some scarring was found on his kidney.

The Kyles were later informed that it was benign.

"If God brought me this far," she remembers thinking, "I know he didn't bring me this far to let nothing happen. So, I wasn't even worried about it."

The transplant was completed, and there have been no complications to date.

"Now she's got three kidneys and I've got one," Joseph said, with Leona laughing at the thought in her chair.

She returns to Duke about every two weeks for blood tests. Every morning, Leona takes a dozen pills; at night, she gulps down another eight.

"All them pills," her husband quipped, "you'd think you wouldn't have to eat."

For Leona, Thanksgiving is more than a day. It is the way she lives. She easily rolls out a list of things for which she is grateful: her husband, her life, her health, her opportunity to serve God.

With a laugh, she recalls a prayer partner's amazement over the kidney donation.

"He said, 'Some husbands, you can't get them to wash dishes, much less give you a kidney.' "

Staff writer Michael Futch can be reached at futchm@fayobserver.com or 486-3529.

http://www.fayobserver.com/Articles/2009/11/23/953668