HOULTON, Maine — As people slowly gathered at the Millar Civic Center Saturday morning for the third annual Hannah Mooers 5K walk/run, a wide range of emotions was exhibited by the more than 100 participants.
Mooers would have been 22-years-old Saturday, and as people turned out for the walk, fond memories and funny stories of Hannah were plentiful, but so too were the painful ones for her family.
“Today being Hannah’s birthday … it’s hard,” Hannah’s father Chris Mooers said. “She had a lot of health issues in her young life. Being in the hospital so much, we saw other kids getting heart transplants and different organ transplants at the Boston Children’s Hospital. So when Hannah passed, we thought it was only right for us to donate her organs.”
The walk raised just over $1,000 for the New England Donor Bank.
From birth, Hannah suffered from a heart disease known as truncas arteriosis type 4, along with several other complications, according to her family. She underwent three open heart surgeries beginning when she was five weeks old. Her second was when she was 5 and her last one at 11 years of age.
At the age of 16, Hannah was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which complicated her condition even more. Mooers persevered and finished out her high school career. She graduated from Houlton High School in 2013 and had plans to attend college, but her health held her back.
She became a fixture at Houlton Elementary School, where she worked as a substitute teacher with the young children.
Hannah also was involved in a number of causes, including the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, the Houlton Humane Society, the Ark Animal Sanctuary and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
When she died in February 2015 at the age of 19, a number of Hannah’s organs were donated to the New England Donor Bank. The Mooers family knows where some of Hannah’s organs went, but has yet to reach out to those people.
“We know some of her organs went to a 60-year-old man and another to a 60-something-year-old woman,” Chris said. “We have never reached out to them. Maybe someday we will.
Chris Mooers said he was overwhelmed by the continued show of support for the annual walk.
“It is so heartwarming,” he said. “There are a lot of Hannah’s friends and co-workers. We really are lucky that we live in a small community like we do, where people show such wonderful support.”
“We love seeing such great support,” added Paula Mooers, Hannah’s mother. “Things like this were always right up Hannah’s alley. She would have loved this. It means the world to us.”
