FRISCO – For 13 years now, diabetes has been eating away at Ron Springs, withering what was once a magnificent body, draining a formerly unquenchable spirit. His kidneys failed three years ago. Doctors took his right foot last year.
Confined to a wheelchair, his hands curled and useless, Springs could only pray and wait.
Pray for a kidney donor.
Wait for an answer.
Family members stepped up. But it didn't do any good. A niece was matched and then ruled out. A nephew, too.
Everson Walls waited for someone, anyone. And he watched his old Cowboys teammate die a little bit more every week.
Who would save Ron Springs?
"What are you gonna do?" the reluctant hero says Monday. "I can't sit here and do nothin'."
So he got tested.
"Fortunately ... or unfortunately," Walls says, smiling, "I was a match."
Says Springs: "You can't back out now."
Backing out would have been easy enough. How many friends would you give a vital organ? Three old pals stood behind Springs at Monday's news conference at Stonebriar Country Club, and it made for quite a team picture.
But not all of Landry's Cowboys could ride to Springs' rescue. Tony Dorsett said he wasn't the right blood type. Robert Newhouse? Diagnosed with diabetes three years ago. Tony Hill looks more and more like he's not a compatible body type.
Or as the normally tight-lipped Newhouse sums it up, "Ron's bald, Everson's gray, Tony's short and Hill's fat."
Counters Hill, towering over his neighbors: "I'm glad I'm standing next to House."
The jabs were sharp Monday, the laughter sweet. Made you think this is what it must have been like on "Ghetto Row," the corner of the Cowboys' locker room Springs ruled in the early '80s.
He was a fullback, which meant he wasn't a star. But he managed to make himself the center of attention anyway: team lawyer, class clown, mayor of Ghetto Row.
Occasionally he'd impersonate Martin Luther King Jr. He preached again Monday.
"Everson is doing the greatest thing anyone could ever do for me," he says. "A lot of people wouldn't step up for me like this. But the ultimate donor was Jesus Christ. He donated his whole body."
One beat, two ...
"All I want from Everson is a kidney."
As late as last week, it wasn't a joke. Walls wasn't pleased when the story became national news. Springs' son, Shawn, a defensive back for the Redskins, leaked the story to The Washington Post. Angered by what he called an invasion of privacy, Walls at first declined comment. He hadn't even told members of his family, and Shawn's story had forced his hand.
Springs and Walls wanted the story to come out after the operation, if at all. Even though the technology has improved significantly – a 90 percent success rate, transplant officials say – there are no guarantees.
Springs' condition could worsen. Walls could get sick. Even the date of a transplant is only a guess, probably sometime in March.
Until he has surgery, Springs will continue to undergo dialysis three times a week. Doctors tell him it probably caused the condition that curved his hands into hooks. Once he goes off dialysis, it should be corrected.
Maybe then, Dorsett says, Springs can "get back to being the old Ron a little bit."
The patient sounds like it already. First thing he'll do after surgery, he says, is get back in shape. Work out, muscle up, "shake the [expletive]" out of these guys.
"Put the African soupbone upside their heads," he says.
The laughter in the room exhilarates Springs. His monologue off and running, a former teammate holding the microphone as he riffs, Springs looks out in the audience and sees an old friend.
Eighty years old, Springs says, identifying the gentleman. Looks 50.
"He's lookin' good, lookin' young," Springs says. "Got all his hair ... got a new girlfriend."
"All right, all right," Walls says, laughing, pulling away the microphone, "that's a little too much information."
Come to think of it, this entire story was more than the principals would have liked for you to know. But good deeds have a way of getting out.
Who'd have thought after all these years that Everson Walls might still save the day?
"He's made a lot of great plays," Hill says, "but none bigger than this."
E-mail ksherrington@dallasnews.com
