A Friend in Deed

When Alice Kramer ’88 heard that her best friend’s father was seriously ill, her first reaction was, "What can I do to help?"

by Debbie Urbanski

"I need to find him a kidney," Jennifer Wilen ’88 had said. Wilen was already scheduled for testing to see if her kidneys’ antigens matched her father’s. Kramer insisted that she be tested as well, although no one really thought her kidneys would be a match (nonrelatives rarely have similar enough kidneys to ensure a successful transplant). But when Kramer’s tests came back one day before Ronald Wilen was scheduled for surgery to prepare for dialysis, everyone was shocked --- her kidney was a nearly perfect match for his.

"There is nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for Jennifer," Kramer says. "I love Jennifer dearly --- that’s really all there is to say about it." On October 1, 2001, she donated her kidney to her best friend’s father.

The surgery went amazingly well. "The doctors said they never saw such a great kidney --- it was one in a million," says Ronald Wilen. His new kidney is functioning well, and Kramer was able to return to work two weeks after the operation.

When Alice Kramer and Jennifer Wilen met as freshmen at Ithaca College, they hung out in different social groups and thought they could never be friends. But something clicked during their junior year, and soon they became inseparable. After graduation their friendship has only grown stronger; the two friends now talk several times daily. Since the operation, Kramer, who teaches special education and lives in Boston with her husband, Yale Woodson, has become even closer to the Wilen family, often checking in with Ronald to see how "her" kidney is doing.

"When you meet people, you don’t know why they’re in your life," says Jennifer Wilen, who lives in New York City with her husband, Robert Salem, and their daughter, Rachel. "Why did I go to Ithaca College? Why did Alice and I become best friends? God must have known somewhere down the line that Alice was going to do something for my father."