By Pat Hammert/Staff Writer

Simeon Colbert succumbed to a staph infection and complications of heart failure Wednesday as the 28-year-old waited in an Oklahoma City heart hospital for a heart transplant.

The father of two won the hearts of his hometown as he fought a five-year battle with cardiomyopathy, a genetic condition that took his father early in life.

His mother, Jerry Sue Colbert, said her son had been hospitalized since Dec. 12. On Christmas Eve, the family’s hopes were dimmed when an available heart was flown in from California but when it arrived, the surgical team found it unsuitable.

A gathering of family and friends will be held at 3 p.m. Monday at Mount Moriah Baptist Church. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday in Jenks Simmons Field House.

“We first thought we’d have the services at Wesley Methodist because it can hold a lot of people. But everyone told us it would not be big enough,” Jerry Sue Colbert said. “Everybody helped and loved Simeon. Everybody just loved my baby.”

Colbert, raised in El Reno with his three brothers, was a defensive end for the El Reno High School Indians and also wrestled during high school. His football skills earned him a full scholarship at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College in Miami and then Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Mich. While in Michigan he began having chest pains and tests showed one side of his heart was larger than the other side. But he was a big man at 6 feet 4 inches.

Five years ago, Simeon was working the loading dock at a local dairy when he came down with what appeared to be flu symptoms. The condition worsened into congestive heart failure.
Doctors diagnosed the problem as cardiomyopathy, the same genetic condition that cut short his father’s life in 1979 when Simeon and his three brothers were small.

The condition progresses until the heart muscle enlarges, thickens and sometimes stiffens and the heart loses its ability to pump blood.

A pacemaker and defibrillator were surgically implanted and the then-27-year-old was placed in a cardiomyopathy research program at The Heart Hospital in Oklahoma City. But by last April, doctors said the young man’s heart was rapidly deteriorating and he was put on a heart transplant list.

Three months later, a device called a ventricular heart assist was implanted into his chest that aided his impaired heart muscle to pump blood. Shortly after the 9-centimeter device was implanted in his chest, bleeding occurred from a tear in the heart muscle and the team of surgeons was assembled again to repair the bleeding.

He underwent post-op care and training to maintain the battery pack to keep the device pumping. But the implant was a temporary measure. Doctors expected it to keep him alive from 14 months to two years, if there were no complications. The procedure had been used only about a dozen times in Oklahoma.

Colbert was able to return home from the hospital to be with his sons, age 5 and 3. Friends and family began raising funds for the expensive post-transplant medications and treatment, by holding tournaments, church dinners and silent auctions. Schoolchildren began collecting donations for the heart transplant fund.

“I cannot tell you how much we appreciate our community,” Jerry Sue Colbert said. “It is so very awesome to me.”

A family friend, Amanda Havern, said the family never gave up hope that a heart would be found for Simeon.

“His death will be very, very difficult on the family, but Jerry Sue is a woman of faith who has instilled that in her sons,” Havern said.