Dale Steele of Pierce, Neb., who had been hospitalized after a fall, died Feb. 11 at the Nebraska Medical Center, becoming the oldest organ donor in the United States at age 100, as confirmed by UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing. (Norfolk Daily News)
(Tribune News Service) — When a representative from Live On Nebraska initially approached Roger Steele and his family to propose that his father, Dale, a World War II veteran, donate his liver, he was surprised, even a bit amused.
“My initial response was, ‘He’s over 100 years old,’” Steele recalled.
But the representative assured the family that age, in the case of Dale Steele’s liver, was just a number. A recipient needed a liver. And the family knew that Steele, while a man of few words, would have said yes, if it could help someone else.
“The consensus was just almost immediately, sure, of course,” Roger Steele said.
Dale Steele of Pierce, Nebraska, who had been hospitalized after a fall, died Feb. 11 at the Nebraska Medical Center, becoming the oldest organ donor in the United States at age 100, as confirmed by UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing.
Two days later, the family was notified that the organ had been successfully implanted in a recipient, capping a life of giving that included his service in Europe during the waning days of the war and as a guard during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials and later caring for his family. He and the late Doris Steele, his wife of 72 years, were known in retirement for maintaining an open-door policy for grandchildren and neighborhood kids in search of cookies, snacks and air for their bicycle tires.
Roger Steele, who is the mayor of Grand Island, Nebraska, said he recently got a call from the surgeon who had transplanted his father’s liver. The surgeon told him that the surgery had gone well and that the recipient was discharged from the hospital after five days.
“He just wanted to thank us for allowing the donation to occur,” Steele said. “He said he hoped it would encourage other people to donate organs and to realize there may not be an age limit.”
Dr. Lee Morrow, Live On Nebraska’s medical director, would like that message to get out as well. Live On is Nebraska’s federally designated, nonprofit organ procurement organization. Anyone 16 or older can register to be an organ donor. More information about how to do so is available at liveonnebraska.org
“Cases like this are extraordinary, but they remind us that donor eligibility is based on health and organ viability, not simply age,” he said.
The liver is unusual in that its cells are constantly regenerating, he said, making its average age at any given time around 3 years old.
And while organs bound for transplant historically have been transported on ice, the technology has continued to advance over the last decade-plus, with companies developing newer systems that supply organs with nutrient solutions and even oxygen.
That’s helped transplant centers to push back the age for donated livers. A year ago, Morrow said, Live On was accepting livers from donors up to age 65. But a few transplant centers began pushing up the age, with several concluding that age should no longer be a limit. Last year, surgeons in Italy transplanted a liver from a 99-year-old.
“This was a substantial leap forward for us,” Morrow said.
The organization, which works closely with the Nebraska Medicine/ University of Nebraska Medical Center transplant program, is required by law to conduct certain tests on organs intended for transplant. Given Dale Steele’s age, he said, they were particularly careful in evaluating his liver.
Other organs, such as hearts and kidneys, typically aren’t transplanted beyond 60 or 65, Morrow said. Tissue, on the other hand, is more forgiving. Live On’s oldest tissue donor was 105.
The new technologies also are allowing transplant organizations to transport organs — which still are in short supply, compared to the need — greater distances and maintain them outside the body longer.
Dale Steele was born on what is now known as Veterans Day in 1925 and raised on a ranch near Ainsworth, Nebraska. After he graduated from high school, he was drafted by the Army and served at the end of World War II in France, Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia.
During his initial mission, he sought out the remnants of the German army and assisted concentration camp survivors in returning home. He was promoted to staff sergeant and deployed to Nuremberg. During the trials, he worked at the prison guarding defendants before he was assigned to the interrogation wing. There, he helped keep watch over top Nazi officials, including Hermann Goering, Adolph Hitler’s second in command.
Roger Steele said his father told them many of the officials were very well educated. Some spoke English. His father said Goering was a talker and an outsized personality who teased him that he should find a German girlfriend. Goering was ultimately convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death.
Instead, Steele returned to Bassett, Nebraska, and met his future wife at a local dance. They raised four children, sons Roger and Robert, who lives in Yankton, South Dakota; daughter Colleen of Omaha and stepson Allan Little of State College, Pennsylvania. They also had four grandchildren.
Dale Steele’s work revolved around agriculture. He raised Hereford cattle on his ranch and worked at the Farmer’s Co-op in Bassett. Later, he managed the Pierce Co-op. Before he retired, he sold irrigation and grain handling equipment for a company in Osmond.
Roger Steele said his parents, having grown up during the Depression, were avid gardeners, feeding their family the food they grew and canning and freezing the surplus.
“I think that probably contributed to his health,” Steele said.
He said he was particularly impressed with the care, dignity and respect that staff from Live On and the Nebraska Medical Center showed his father and the family. He said he had “one of the most memorable and touching experiences” of his life when his father was wheeled to surgery through a hallway lined with medical staff in what’s known as a Hero’s Walk.
“I looked into the faces of all the medical personnel there, and there were a lot of them, and I could tell they truly appreciated what my father would be doing,” he said. “It was just absolutely beautiful and touching that they would be there to acknowledge that ... anybody who is a donor is a very important person.”
Steele said it’s always very sad to lose a loved one. But in a way, his father is living on, which is the miracle of organ donation, particularly because it involves such a generous act.
“I’m proud of the way he lived,” he said. “I’m proud of the way he died, because he helped somebody else.”
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