The Gift of Jack Lynch

_{Jack Lynch, Ald. Michelle Harris and Rep. Jonathan Jackson}

A Crusader Profile in Excellence

Jack Lynch is a man of distinction. His life is a living testament to self-determination and commitment.

Lynch, who recently retired as a senior advisor for the Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network, has been celebrated for his groundbreaking work in the organ and tissue donation field. As a pioneer in transplantation, his remarkable efforts have saved tens of thousands of African American lives.

The Gift of Hope is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Illinois serving northwest Indiana. It collaborates with hospitals, transplant centers, and other partners to ensure the availability of organs and tissues for those in need.

African Americans face a significant disparity in organ donation. Also, Black individuals are disproportionately in need of organ transplants compared to other racial groups yet have a much lower rate of organ donors available, resulting in longer wait times and a higher risk of death while waiting for a transplant.

“There’s no shortage of patients,” Lynch said in an inspiring interview, “there is a tremendous shortage of organs needed. Prior to this work, they could always declare (the high rate of death) is attributable to Blacks lack of organ donation. I began to train my counterparts and that changed.

“Now when you look at the gains in organ transplants and donations, the biggest gains are among African Americans,” he said. “People are able to continue with their lives, thanks to a gift of hope from someone in their community.”

Lynch, 74, an executive and educator who began his career in pharmaceutical sales, has overcome poverty, racism, and societal low expectations to become a leading advocate for organ donation and cultural competency in healthcare. As a leader, his compassion and laser focus have defined his career. But it is his humble beginnings that highlights both his character and unwavering commitment to excel.

When poverty, racism and uncertainty secured a place for him among the lower rungs of life, Lynch’s upbringing, and mentorship by strong men, helped him say otherwise. They taught him that it wasn’t enough to survive; he needed self-discipline, and a sense of purpose and a mind that would never give consent to hopelessness.

As Jim Crow flourished throughout the South, his father, Walter, and mother Alma, left Helena, Arkansas, for greener economic pastures in the late 1940s. Neither of them wanted to spend their days working in the white man’s fields. In love and hopeful, the couple migrated to Chicago at the urging of relatives and settled on the city’s South Side.

Walter took a job at the stockyards, while his wife stayed at home and reared their children. Times were hard, but Lynch’s father and uncle had hitchhiked his way to the city in six days and had faced worse. Until he got on his feet, he and a pregnant Alma lived in Ida B. Wells development with his sister, her husband, and their children. At one point, 12 people were crammed into the two-bedroom unit, trying to carve out a life for themselves.

Mr. Lynch, Jack recalled, was a man of perseverance, few words, and even fewer excuses, and took odd jobs to supplement his meager earnings. Other than a dollar or two he kept for himself, his pay was turned over to his wife, who “made do” and raised her children to love God, be obedient, resourceful and of good character.

As their family grew, the couple applied for public housing and took an opening in Racine Courts at 10833 S. Racine, in Morgan Park, and moved into a tiny townhome. Jackie came along on July 21, 1950, joining his three older brothers. Another brother and a sister soon followed him. They joined other kids in their shared courtyard and played ball or other games until their parents called them to study or supper.

The Lynches attended Mount Calvary Baptist Church at 111th and Troop and settled into their more welcoming surroundings. His parents sang in the choir. Despite Chicago’s strict segregation laws and restrictive covenants that deprived African Americans from expanding beyond the city’s Black Belt, the family found security among an emerging middle class.

Lynch’s fond remembrance of 1950s Morgan Park spoke of vibrant, active neighborhoods, and churches, as well as a thriving local economy and Black business district on 111th Street. 

“We had everything but a jewelry store,” Lynch recalled, “We had gas stations, grocery stores, a fish market, clothing stores, a record store, medical offices, and pharmacies. There were houses that sold penny candy—it was truly a Black-owned village, with a few exceptions.

“People looked out for each other and if someone did something out of pocket, it was handled,” he told the Crusader. “The men in Morgan Park,  the fathers, uncles, and teenage boys all worked, and they worked hard. Sometimes when my father got home, he was so tired (my brothers and I) would have to go out and help him out of his car.”

Though his community was predominantly Black, Lynch said he still experienced racial bias in the form of colorism. “I am extremely dark skinned and so I was teased quite a bit,” he said. “I was called “Old Black Jack” by other kids. People who looked like me were blocked from certain opportunities. I wasn’t expected to amount to anything beyond working with a shovel in my hand. I had yet to experience white racism. I had only known a sort of discrimination from my own people.”

The nickname and the low expectation set for him by others fueled his drive to succeed. He developed a habit of self-study  and the emulation of those he thought successful.

Lynch told a story about when in John D. Shoop Elementary School, he was relegated to the position of “curtain holder” during assemblies, saying because of his darker hue, he rarely received speaking or highlight roles. “Once, my friend, Gerald Gray, who was often chosen as the MC and to give a speech, got strep throat days before the program; so, the teachers became concerned about how the assembly would go on,” he said. “One of them noticed that I had always been standing in my position on the stage as curtain holder and asked if I had memorized my friend’s lines. 

“I had,” Lynch recalled, laughing. “I knew every line and what needed to be said. They begrudgingly gave it to me, the darkest boy in the class. They had no choice if the show were to go on.” The fifth grader began practicing his newly given lines in his family’s bathroom, meticulously preparing for his starring role. During one such and rather loud rehearsal his father walked in.

“He wanted to know what I was going on about and I told him I had my first speaking role in the school assembly,” Lynch said. His father said nothing. “On the day of the performance, I stepped from behind the curtain and there I saw my father sitting front row; dressed in his Sunday suit and wing-tipped shoes. He nodded at me, and I thought I would urinate on myself.

“After it was over, I glanced quickly toward my father,” he continued. “He just looked at me, nodded again, maybe this time with a hint of a smile, and turned to leave. Once we returned to our classroom, I rushed to a window to watch my father slowly walking across the playground. I felt so proud.” Lynch’s father had lost his job, and the family had been struggling. The repo man claimed his car, and Walter spent many days looking for supplemental work or doing odd jobs. Their mother took domestic work, cleaning homes. In the winter she secured additional employment by placing holiday decorations. 

The eldest sons went to work and took on the slack their father’s absence left behind. Lynch worked odd jobs such as raking leaves, shoveling snow or selling  Ebony or Jet magazines. They found yard work nearby in the mostly white Beverly neighborhood. “My brother Tyrone, who was a year older than me, was a great hustler,” he said. “He knew how to find work, how to keep work and make the best of his time. His drive and determination rubbed off on me. He taught me how to make lemonade out of lemons.”

Sometimes, when there were no jobs to be found, the boys stole produce from a few gardens. “Nobody complained,” he said, “because we were not destroying anything. We just took a few tomatoes or potatoes, carrots, or ripe vegetables. The neighbors knew… But that is what I mean, it was a village.”

By the time he entered Morgan Park High School, Jack Lynch had become something of a “hustler” himself. He says he worked any job he could secure to help his family meet ends. “We weren’t abject poor. My father earned enough on a Friday for us to make it until the following Wednesday,” he explained. “We hated when that day rolled around, because we knew our food had run out and we had to make it another couple of days.

He also recalled a time when in 1966 his father, enticed by advertising, took the family to view new homes being built by a white developer in the neighborhood. “Our parents made us wait in the car because they thought that if (the developer) saw all of these kids they wouldn’t allow them to buy,” Lynch said. “When they returned to the car, my father looked so disheartened. They wanted a $1300 down payment, which we didn’t have and wouldn’t have any time soon. We were still on the ‘making it until Wednesday’ schedule. So, we never bought one. I lived in the projects until I left for school.”

In 1968, Lynch’s father died from cancer. The death rocked the family to its core, but through their faith and support from relatives, they did not crumble. The future executive put more thought into his studies, skilled after-school activities and graduated on time. He had put little thought into what his future might be. Two of his brothers went off to fight the Vietnam War, while Tyrone, Jack and his siblings pitched in to help their mother.

“We graduated on a Friday, and I remember on Monday I saw about 10 classmates standing at the bus stop saying they were on their way to get jobs (in manual labor),” he said. “They had determined that their destiny was to have a shovel in their hand. At best a couple thought they might get with the CTA or post office. 

“I knew working with a shovel wasn’t my destiny,” he explained. “That’s what they saw for themselves on Monday morning. But I wanted something different for myself.”

By then Tyrone, who had been working for a white-owned pharmacy in Roseland, had taken a job at a Black-owned pharmacy closer to home. Jack was working in the cafeteria of a local hospital. “My brother recommended to his former bosses that I take his place,” Lynch said. He soon began making deliveries for Schmidt-Lofton where he advanced to be a pharmacy technician before leaving after 10 years.

“Schmidt-Lofton was my first experience with racism,” he said. “One of the pharmacists was good natured, but the other one clearly didn’t care for African Americans. They’d hired me on my brother’s word. Well as times changed and more families moved into the area, their customer base began to shift.

“Many were on welfare and so when they came to get their prescriptions (the white pharmacist) didn’t seem to like the fact that they weren’t paying full price,” he told the Crusader. “I saw his hostility and how he treated the Black customers. In addition, he was overwhelmed. So, I sprung in and started reading the prescriptions as they came in and then I’d retrieved the bottles of medicine needed to help him expedite the orders. After a while, he wound up sending me to get certified as a pharmacy apprentice, and I did.”

Lynch said his keen observation and ability to understand processes helped him advance in his career. He had enrolled in Chicago Teachers College (now Chicago State University) after taking classes at Southeast City College (now Olive Harvey). Later, when he gained work at the prestigious Black-owned pharmacy after Tyrone also joined the military. He said his interest in health care and the delivery of service in the Black community peeked.

Within weeks of employment, Dr. Raymond A. Pierce, a prominent dentist, noticed his hard work and diligence and offered him an internship in his practice. Lynch assisted him with patients and appeared to be on path toward dentistry. Later, the doctor paved the way for him to enroll in a master-med program at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN. 

Concerned about his mother’s well-being, and as the eldest son that had not joined the military, he left Meharry, returned to Chicago, married, and started a family of his own. 

Lynch took a local job as a manager of hospital development for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals where he marketed and conducted clinical trials with on organ-rejection medicines with physicians and various hospital systems. It was during this work that he noticed the difficulty and, at times, culturally tone deaf, attitude doctors, health care professionals and others had toward Black patients needing organ donations.

After reading an article in the Chicago Tribune written by a white physician who noted, via happenstance, that Blacks were less likely to donate organs, and thus receive transplants, Lynch said he became enraged. “He talked about the low rate of transplants among African Americans, and he wrote that he didn’t see that ever changing,” Jack said. “I took exception to that… because he was essentially saying more Black people were going to die, and he had not offered any solution to that.

“I also was a leading expert in the Midwest and (the doctor) had not spoken with me,” Lynch said. “I wanted to know how he had come to such a stark conclusion. I took exception to this. I decided to act on my own and I started doing research.”

Lynch said that after working full time in Sandoz he would spend his Friday nights and weekends observing and speaking with families of Black fatal gunshot patients coming into the emergency room at Cook County Hospital. He found that not only were medical personnel speaking to them in harsh tones, or in hard-to-understand medical terms, most people were unaware of how organ donation worked and how it could be used to save other lives.

“The more I explained the need and how their gift of hope could save the life of another, the more people became receptive to donating when they knew their loved one would not make it,” he said. “It took care, compassion, patience and speaking to people in a way they could understand. It required patience and cultural competence.”

He said many African Americans were reluctant to donate due to historical racism in medicine, most notably the Tuskegee Experiment. Between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an unethical study on African American men with syphilis. They were left untreated to observe the disease’s progression, without their informed consent. 

“The fear of being experimented on by our people is a valid concern,” Lynch said. “One who is culturally competent would understand this. There are also a bunch of other misconceptions and myths that lead people to not donate, but once you address those concerns and explain how donation saves lives, the attitudes change, and participation goes up.

Lynch developed a curriculum and program to train health care professionals on how to speak to families about organ donation. His course led to Illinois becoming one of the nation’s top transplant centers, especially among African American patients. It has also been adopted nationwide. He also redefined community outreach by expanding beyond churches by reaching out “where it’s most necessary to be” to educate people who may be in a position to become organ donors.

The advocate faced a number of hurdles, pushbacks and racial bias from some of his colleagues. At times he wanted to quit, but his commitment would not allow it. “I learned that if they were pulling me back, they were behind me. I had to keep going,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let them turn me around.”

Because of his success,  In 1987, Lynch joined Regional Organ Bank of Illinois, now Gift of Hope, and created a robust community education and outreach program. Six years later, then Illinois Gov. George Ryan appointed Lynch to serve as chairman of the Illinois Department of Public Health Organ Donation Committee.  He became a sought-after expert at media appearances and national conferences.

Of his legacy, Lynch was humbled. “I am just an ordinary man who some believe has made extraordinary contributions,” he said. “There’s nothing special about me. I just wasn’t going to pick up that shovel.”