Twenty years after the ambulance ride to a Boston hospital where his life was saved, Harold Strope and his daughter Sarah have replicated that journey on bicycle.
Once in Boston, the duo met with some of the doctors and nurses at Massachusetts General Hospital who performed the life-saving heart transplant Strope received so many years ago. After departing from the Savile Road Bike Shop in Delmar, Thursday, Oct. 1, the pair traveled 55 miles the first day of their journey, 40 miles the next two days each, and a shorter 30 miles on the final day, for a combined four days of biking.
In 1995, Strope underwent a heart transplant after a virus, likely the Coxsackie B Virus, caused the white blood cells in his heart to multiply. Those white blood cells did not dissipate as they should have after they mended to the virus, and Stope’s heart was destroyed as a result.
“I got hit with a virus and it just brought me to my knees,” said Stope, a healthy, relatively athletic individual before the virus hit. Since his transplant, Strope has made great efforts to eat healthily and exercise often. He and his family have now become advocates for LiveOnNY, formerly named Organ Donors Network of New York.
Howard and Sarah Strope were joined for their first leg of the journey by Audrey Koester, Sarah’s advisor at Albany Academy for Girls during her father’s illness, and the school’s librarian. “They’re a very strong family. They support each other all the time,” said Koester.
Strope was a senior in high school at the time her father was struck with the virus. While many teenagers would have buckled under the stress of applying to colleges, school work and the “self-imposed pressure” that came with being the ranking scholar at the school, Strope “just had to keep plowing on through,” during such a trying time, said Koester.
“To balance all that with the emotional challenges of that time is not something that I think a lot of 17-year-olds would have been able to handle at that time, so we talked a lot and we hugged a lot and we’ve stayed in touch,” said Koester.
With the help of email and Facebook, she and Strope have stayed in contact for the 20 years that have passed since Strope’s graduation. When Koester joined Sarah Strope for the trip, it was the first time in a number of years that they had met in person. She will return home after the first 55 miles of the trip, after reaching North Adams, Mass., in the Berkshires. The Berkshires were considered the most difficult leg of the Stropes’ journey, according to Harold Strope.
Sarah Strope has been planning the trip for about three years now, and regularly cycles as part of the training for the numerous triathlons and Iron Man competitions she has competed in since 2006. Her father, an avid cyclist since his retirement five years ago, and mother Mary, who drove alongside her daughter and husband during the trip, have been present at every major race of hers since then.
In the days leading up to her departure, Strope returned to Albany Academy for Girls, stressing to the upper school girls how important organ donation is. “One person becoming an organ donor can extend a family’s life by 20 years,” said Sarah Strope. And for Harold Strope, “I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for people signing up to be organ donors.”
