Katie Couric's Notebook: Heart

Tony Huesman broke a world record every morning, simply by waking up.

You see, Tony was the longest surviving person with the same transplanted heart.

Growing up in Dayton, Ohio he was diagnosed with a weakening heart and by college he was told he had just three months to live.

On his own, Tony read about a heart transplant program at Stanford University - the only program in the country at the time. And at 20 he got a new heart he was told would last, at most, ten years. That was in August of 1978.

Since then, Tony married and had a job at a sporting goods store. But he also worked, tirelessly, to teach children about heart health and help other transplant patients.

These days, 130 hospitals perform 2,200 heart transplants every year.

Tony Huesman got 31 years out of his donated organ before he died last Sunday at the age of 51 from cancer.

His heart never gave up, and neither did he.

That's a page from my notebook.
I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.