Jason had graduated Community High School in 1998 and was taking a year off from school and planning to start college in the fall of 1999. Jason was a very intelligent and compassionate young man with a photographic memory.

Even though his birthday was coming up in a few weeks, his mother Kathy had felt the need to make him an early birthday cake, telling him she could always make another one when his real birthday came around.

This was to be his last cake. She had always made him a birthday cake and sang happy birthday to him. How her heart aches with this memory, for now on his birthday ,his cake has to be taken to a cemetery .

Jason was 16 when he started working at the McDonalds in Rockwall, Texas. This would be his one and only job except for the newspaper routes he did as a younger boy. He had worked his way up into management at McDonalds ,for that was the kind of hard working and conscientious young man he was.....

It was to start like any other day for Jason, getting up so early that most of us were still in bed sleeping,

Driving through the small town of Nevada, Texas on his way to work at 4:45 a.m., he hit a cow in the road on farm road 1138 because the owner had not maintained the fence.

Such a simple thing.....mending a fence .....

But for a young man just starting out his life,

it would mean the end of everything...

Jason's injuries were critical and he was transferred from one hospital to another one in Dallas. As the days went by, he lay in a coma, unresponsive and continuing to get worse .

There are no words to describe the anguish, the terror, the shock and disbelief of seeing your child lay so strangely still, with a respirator on and tubes going from him in all directions....and being so helpless to do anything to help this child you brought into the world.

On the day of his birthday, April 6, 1999, Jason reached brain death.

Jason was an organ donor.

His hopes and dreams were gone, and his mother's heart was broken and shattered.

Jason and his mother Kathy had been very close. She had him at such an early age(17) that they were more then just mother and son, but good friends. He had a wisdom about him that far exceeded his young age.

He is loved and missed very much.