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Heartfelt Performance

Mark Dewar, Sports Editor for the Sun Newspapers in Overland Park, Kansas
August 19, 2004

Susan Gabel of Overland Park, Illinois had just completed a little work in the water. Now came the real waterworks, courtesy of her husband, Ray.

"God love him," Susan remembered. "I got out of the pool, and he was crying. I said, 'Don't cry. I can hardly breathe.' He was so proud of me, and it was so touching."

Susan Gabel, 43, was competing in the National Kidney Foundation's 2004 U.S. Transplant Games, held July 27–August 1 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN.

Locally, nearly 200 folks, including 46 transplant recipients from throughout Kansas and western Missouri, competed as Team Mo-Kan. In all, this year's Games attracted some 2,000 transplant competitors from across the nation.

Among them? Ray Gabel, 37, my ever-gritty former Little League baseball teammate from the fourth grade—and Susan Gabel's very own husband.

Ray Gabel understands the “transplant game” as much as he has come to understand the Transplant Games after receiving a heart transplant on Valentine's Day (Yep, really!) in 1991.

For Susan Gabel, a liver transplant recipient, the first swimming event of the meet was the women's 40–49 100-breast stroke. So much has she endured in life of late that, for a time, she considered not competing in any swimming events—her best—at all this year.

In the end, however, her competitive juices won out.

Moreover, "I finally got to see her swim competitively because of the way things were bracketed," a thrilled Ray explained. A window of time during his racquetball competition allowed him to watch his better half compete in swimming for the first time ever at these Games.

Few could understand the way Ray can what Susan had gone through to just reach the starting blocks for this year's 100 breast stroke—much less exit the pool as a silver medallist in the event after missing the gold by less than a second.

Less than gold? Tell it to Ray, who now was weeping openly. For that, thank the deep well of emotion his wife's simple participation had caused to burst inside of him.

"It kind of got to me," he admitted. "She'd had some back surgery, lost her brother (David Sears) and father (Robert Sears)."

Now, "Of all things," Ray said, "I'd told her, 'You're dropping your best (event).' She reminded me that I'm her husband and not the team captain in that (swimming) category," he added with a laugh.

Quietly, husband and wife are earning the last laugh together over the respective calamities that once seriously threatened their every future laugh in life.

Each came away with an amazing six medals at this year's Games. Ray's previous best was five; Susan's four.

Two of those medals for each, however, stood tall above the others: Ray and Susan got to team this year in co-ed basketball and volleyball.

The results were predictably Gabel. They paired to win a silver medal in basketball and bronze in volleyball. (Individual sports at the Games were sub-divided into age groups, while team sports competed in an open category.)

"It's not that there were no other (transplant) couples up there," Ray explained. "Even on our team (Mo-Kan), we had another couple up there. But very few are getting to compete together. That was really nice. You'd see on the scorecard Gabel and Gabel, and they'd double-check that almost every game.

"It was really nice to get to compete with my wife," Ray stressed. "My thing is racquetball—I love that—but there is something nice about being on the court and literally having them look at you going, 'You mean, that's your wife?'"

A great moment in sports, indeed. One so touching that even the most impartial of judges could not stay in the middle on this.

"Even the refs would go," Ray added with a chuckle, "'That's real neat.'"