Local Man Exemplifies National Heart Month Theme
By Sid Riley
Godfrey Lawrence, a lifelong Grand Ridge resident, is an amazing man who has lived an amazing life. How many people do you know who are master aircraft mechanics? How many people do you know who have spent a lifetime flying a variety of aircraft, including Lear jets, to locations all over the world? How many seventy four year old men do you know who have had a twenty year old heart beating strongly in their chest for over eight years? Truly Amazing!
Godfrey Lawrence was born in Grand Ridge, graduated from Grand Ridge High School, attended Chipola, served four years in the U. S. Navy Air Force as an aircraft mechanic, and then returned to Grand Ridge to work with his Dad in their service station on highway 90. He married Thelma Robinson, a local girl who grew up in Malone and then graduated from Sneads High School. They celebrated their fiftieth anniversary last year.
Godfrey and Thelma had three children. They lost their first child, Teresa, to leukemia when she was only four years old. They have two other adult children, a daughter Lisa Burdeshaw who has two children, and a son, Ricky, who has one child. Both reside in Jackson County.
As a young man, Lawrence went to work as a civilian aircraft mechanic at Graham Air Base. After the closure of the base in the mid 1960’s he returned to the family business in Grand Ridge to work with his father. Eventually, he went to work for Harold Foran as part of the charter flying business which operated for many years at the Marianna Airport. During these years Godfrey earned his Lear Jet certification and flew to locations all over the world as a charter pilot.
If you want to hear some interesting flying stories just stop by and chat with Godfrey some free afternoon. He might tell you of flying "mysterious packages" from Las Vegas to banks in Grand Cayman, or of flying with no navigation aids at night into the mountain top airport in Guatemala City.
It was during the height of his flying career in 1985 that Godfrey began to have heart problems. He noticed a shortness of breath, lack of stamina, and frequent chest pains. He finally had heart imaging performed which disclosed an 80% blockage of his main artery. A stint was inserted at this time. Two years later, in 1987 he suffered a massive heart attack which destroyed the lower half of his heart.
The next two years are a horror story of stints, more stints, defibulators, and declining health. Through it all Godfrey kept on working, doing aircraft repairs and flying as a co-pilot every chance he got. The worse part of the story came when he had a battery (defibulator) change in Tallahassee that led to a staph infection that almost killed him. At the last moment he rushed to Jacksonville where he had to spend four hospitalized months fighting the dreaded infection.
Finally, his pastor at the Providence Baptist Church, Brother Butler, told him of a friend and heart surgeon at Atlanta’s Emory Hospital, who performed heart transplants. By this time a desperate and dying Godfrey Lawrence was willing to take any path of hope. He went to Atlanta where a battery of tests was performed to determine his condition and eligibility for transplant. At the last moment they discovered he was not a resident of Georgia. Godfrey refused to move to Georgia in order to be eligible, so he returned to Grand Ridge, still a sick but proud Florida resident.
Then Dr. Williams in Tallahassee informed him of a similar program at the University of Florida Hospital in Gainesville. He next went to Gainesville and had the same battery of tests and evaluation performed there. He was deemed to be eligible, but was told he would have to wait many weeks before a heart was found and his turn at the table arrived.
While he was waiting in Gainesville for a heart to be found he had frequent telephone conversations with Harold Foran in Marianna, who called every time he had a charter flight to carry a heart somewhere and he would jokingly say to Godfrey, "I’m on my way to get your heart!", and Godfrey would jokingly reply, "Bring that thing on down, I’m ready and waiting!"
This routine was repeated several times until September 29, 1999 after two months of waiting in Gainesville, when Harold Foran again called and said "I’m on my way to get your heart!", and Godfrey gave his usual reply…..only this time it really was his new heart that Foran was flying to Gainesville.
Although Godfrey has never actually verified the source of the heart, he was told that a young, nineteen year old boy had been killed in a jet ski accident in Pensacola, and the family had agreed to use his strong, young, heart as a donor heart for some needy fellow human being. That fortunate person was Godfrey Lawrence.
The transplant was a success. After another period of horror from the effects of needed drugs and painful physical therapy, Lawrence was finally able to return to the place he loves the most- his home in Grand Ridge. The transplanted heart has now been in his body for eight and a half years, and he has returned to a normal life for a man his age. In fact, his life today is more active than for most men his age.
He still maintains private aircrafts for several local flyers. He still pilots every chance he gets. Last spring he and Thelma went on a bus tour all the way to Alaska, which he proclaims was one of the most enjoyable trips he ever took. He builds model planes, and fishes when they are biting.
The next time you are driving into Grand Ridge, just as you reach the four lane section heading East on Highway 90, look to your right. There you will surprisingly see a grass landing strip which is affectionately called by locals "Godfrey Lawrence International" airport. If you turn in and go to the hangar in back, you will probably find Godfrey flat of his back under an airplane happily working away.
Godfrey has requested for the Jackson County Times to encourage all of our readers to please register as organ donors when they renew their driver’s licenses. His story is a true life example of the impact that taking time to make the choice to be a donor can have on another person’s life.
The Godfrey Lawrence Story is a tribute to this month’s medical theme "National Heart Month". He continues to be a great asset to our local community. Like a durable Timex watch, Godfrey just "keeps on ticking"!
