Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 5, 1991                   TAG: 9104050446
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

STILL $75,000 TO RAISE, BUT HOPE BOLSTERED FOR LIVER TRANSPLANT

Since his story ran in March 29's New River Current, $4,238 has been donated to his wife's fund at the University of Virginia Medical Center. And Elliott and his wife, Leona, raised $622 at a benefit Saturday at Hill's Department Store in Christiansburg.

But with more than $75,000 to go, Elliott's still worried.

Leona Elliott has put her faith in God. Whatever God decides is what will be, she said.

She wears a brave face, but at night when she takes a bath, she lets the tears fall.

"I don't show my family I'm crying. . . . I don't want them to see me cry," she said. "I've got to carry it around inside me." Her doctor was unavailable for comment Thursday, but Elliott has been told that the sooner she gets the transplant the better.

"The doctor says I need it while I'm still walking and talking," she said. At the moment she has a 40 percent to 80 percent chance of survival, but her chances decrease if her health deteriorates any further.

Leona Elliott contracted hepatitis from a blood transfusion when she had open-heart surgery in 1972.

"I'm walking on a tightrope that's ready to snap," she said.

Her skin is yellowing slightly and with each day she gets weaker, she said. "I used to love walking around the mall, but now I go 50 feet and have to sit down."

Fund-raisers for liver transplants are nothing new, Stan Elliott has been told repeatedly. He's fed up hearing it, he said.

"People are being so hateful telling me this isn't new," he said. "This is my wife. . . . People want me to beg and I'm doing it. I'm crawling and begging."

His faith in people was renewed when he was told of the $4,000 in the fund. "Maybe there are people out there that love us," he said.

Radio announcer Sandy Jones at WBLB, a gospel radio station, is organizing a car wash and bake sale Saturday at the Golden Corral in Pulaski, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Jones also has placed jars in local businesses to raise money for the Elliotts.

"I cried when I read it in the paper and I didn't even know him," she said. "It could be one of us next, but people don't think of that."

Donations can be sent to Liver Transplant Fund for Leona Elliott, University of Virginia, Department of Hospital Admissions-Medical Center, Box 411, Charlottesville, Va. 22906-9983, or call (804) 924-2619. Call the Elliotts at (703) 268-5960.