When Sandy Sides’ 5-year-old daughter Savannah asked her about organ donation one day in 2007, she had no idea how life changing those words would become.
“I told her, ‘You’re just a baby. We have a long time to worry about that,’” Sides recalled. “But she said, ‘Mommy, you need to put my name down there, because I’m not gonna need my organs once I get to heaven.’”
About a month later, she and Savannah were in a head-on car accident. It left Sides terribly injured and killed her daughter. Savannah’s father, Stephen, stood by her decision to donate her organs. She gave her kidneys, liver, heart valve and eye tissue to five people in need.
Now tuned in to the impact of organ donation in such a real and personal way, the Sideses were ready to help others as a way to honor Savannah’s decision to be a donor.
They started the Savannah Faith Miracle Ride, an annual motorcycle event to raise money for transplant costs, in 2009. With about 40 riders, the event raised about $1,200 toward a kidney and liver transplant for a man at the Sideses’ home church, New Prospect Baptist, Jasper.
But the Sideses wanted to do more.
“In the beginning, we wanted to make it a nonprofit so we could do other things besides just a motorcycle ride, but we thought that was going to cost a lot to let it happen,” Sandy Sides said. “We knew that if that was something God wanted us to do, He’d make a way for it to happen.”
Sure enough, God did provide a new option. A fellow New Prospect member did some research and discovered that setting up a nonprofit organization was actually pretty simple, requiring a few small fees and some brief paperwork. So Savannah Faith Miracle Ride Inc. was born, enabling the Sideses to have a broader reach in spreading the word about organ donation.
Dianne Grace, Savannah’s grandmother, serves as the organization’s treasurer and said she’s been amazed to watch how people have been inspired by her granddaughter’s decision to become an organ donor.
“If people look at the website, they usually sign up to be a donor,” Grace said. “They’ll come in and think, ‘If a 5-year-old can make that decision, a grown person should be able to.’”
For the Sideses, founding and working with the organization truly has been a healing experience that has allowed them to help people in a way they never could have before.
“Many times, I thought I’d trade it all to have Savannah back,” she said. “And I’ve thought, ‘God, couldn’t we have learned the same lessons and not have to go through all this?’
“But we couldn’t have. People get involved in causes because they’ve affected their lives.”
For more information, visit www.savannahmr.org.
Share with others: