Dale Folwell, a state House member from Winston-Salem, joined other legislators in Raleigh yesterday to get the 2010 short budget session going. In the course of the next months, he'll be in the rough and tumble of partisan politics on Jones Street and as a Republican will likely come out on the short end of many battles, because Democrats run the joint.
He seems an unlikely fit in that world, being a soft-spoken fellow who describes his line of work as "private investor." The only hint that Folwell might go a little outside the lines now and then is that his hobby is racing motorcycles, which, one would guess, is something in which he is not joined by some of his more sedentary colleagues in the General Assembly. (Or, I should hasten to add, by a correspondent who thinks escalators are often a little too speedy.)
But Folwell also slips outside those lines in legislating, wherein he's known to do some things direct from the heart. More than a year ago, he pushed a bill that would allow cameras to be installed on the "Stop" arms of school buses, to catch drivers who passed them, a serious offense and a dangerous one. The measure was named for a youngster who had been killed by a driver who passed a stopped bus. Also on Folwell's mind was the death of his own 7-year-old son 10 years before, the result of a car passing a school vehicle.
In time, we'll know if that legislation makes a difference, but it should.
Now Dale Folwell has done his duty from the heart again, literally, and he believes legislation has already made a difference.
He has long been interested in organ donation, and proudly notes that as of the end of April, which was National Donate Life Month, North Carolina had more than four million people signed as donors. No small factor in a dramatic increase in the number was the "Heart Prevails Act," the sponsors of which included not just Folwell but some bipartisan colleagues. The legislation passed in 2007, and the difference Folwell believed it would make was proven, he believes, in the state's crossing of that four million mark.
The legislation made a minor (but really as it turned out, major) modification in the law. A heart symbol on a driver's license shows the holder's intent to be an organ donor. But prior to the Heart Prevails Act, that didn't necessarily mean the intended donations would be made. "It didn't really mean anything under the law," Folwell said.
As he explained it, "Most people thought the heart symbol on the driver's license made them an organ donor, but it wasn't considered a 'first person directive.' With this legislation, the heart symbol reflects the wishes of the deceased" to be a donor. The reason that's important, he said, is that for organs to be viable for a donation, the donor must be oxygenated. If there is delay and oxygen is not provided, the organs that might be donated cannot be preserved.
Families still participate in the process, because before an organ is actually used, doctors review the donor's medical history with the next-of-kin. And if for some reason the deceased person has given someone power of attorney to overrule the donation process, that is respected.
Folwell advanced the legislation in memory of his friend Tim Dillon, who died in 2006, at the age of 45, of a massive stroke. He had told Folwell long before that he had a heart symbol on his driver's license, but because at that time next of kin had to be contacted, too much time elapsed for his intended donation to be made.
Before the legislation, Folwell said, there was a gap in North Carolina between the number of donations and the number of transplants. Now, the state has seen, since passage, a sizable increase in the number of corneal transplants and in organ transplants.
In these next weeks, we will hear of (and write about) the activities inside the Legislative Building and some of those activities will make us cringe, others will make us laugh, and still others will set our veins to bulging. But now and then we're reminded that good deeds are therein done. By good people.
