Son would have wanted heart given

Press, 3 December 1987, Page 8

Son would have wanted heart given

PA Auckland On Tuesday night the Cobcroft family of Kaiwhaka unwittingly became New Zealand’s first heart donors when they signed over their dying son’s organs to Waikato Hospital. As Robert (Bob) John Cobcroft, aged 25, of Rotorua, lay in a coma with irreversible brain damage from a motorcycle accident, surgeons asked the family to consider donating his organs. After a two hour meeting the family agreed, and gave Brian Lindsay, aged 28, a chance at life. Don and Nancy Cobcroft heard only yesterday morning that their son’s heart lived in the body of another man after a journalist rang at 7 a.m. The hospital had told the family members they would not be told the recipient’s name. But the distraught family, with Bob’s fiancee, Susan Gould, be? lieve they made a decif

sion Bob would welcome. “It seemed senseless not to donate the organs when only his brain was damaged and the rest ol his body was fine,” said Mr Cobcroft. “Bob was so full ol life I know he would have chosen to give it to another if he could nol have it.” “He was a really brilliant guy,” said Susan. “He would have helped anyone.” In fact, that is what Bob was doing when he came off his motorbike at 10.50 p.m. on Monday after colliding with a dog. He was a trained mechanic before taking up a salesman’s job with H. K. Heaton, Ltd, and had been to check over a car a friend was thinking of buying. Mr Cobcroft said he was initially angry with the owners of the dog but felt no animosity now. “There is nothing we can do to change what has happened,” he said. “We can only hope that

the heart that came from Bob will give life.” As Susan, Bob’s brother Colin, aged 27, and sister Donna, aged 11, looked over photographs of Bob, the tears flowed freely. Susan and Bob became engaged in May with no definite plans of marriage, but had bought a house together after returning from a seven-month trip to Europe and England. “I need a few months to think about what I’m going to do,” said a sobbing Susan. “I want to sell the house because I feel I can’t go back there because of all the memories but Fll wait and see. “You just never expect this sort of thing to happen.” Yesterday Susan composed her last words to Bob which will be read at his funeral at noon tomorrow in Rotorua. They read: “The love we shared, the 'times we were together, hold the memories tHat will last forever.”