A freak fire killed Iowa paramedic Mike Nelson. But his tissues live on in hundreds of people.

POLK CITY, Ia. — Mike Nelson’s pants and boots rarely made their way into the laundry basket or the front closet on Father’s Day. But the mess wasn’t for any sacrosanct holding to dad’s yearly day as King of the Castle.

No, for Nelson, a paramedic living on the outskirts of Saylorville Lake, Father’s Day was never grilled meat, cold beers and jamming to classic rock playlists. His holiday was fast-food snacks in between high-pitched pager beeps telling him where the next person needed help.

If he ever made it home on that third Sunday in June, the pants and boots lay in their spot near his side of the bed, ensuring no time would be wasted with sartorial searching when he had to go back out.

“Dad got called in,” wife Michelle Nelson would tell their two daughters, Madison, now 22, and Grace, 18, who would smile and shrug. As far back as they remembered, their dad had volunteered for a rotating list of organizations too deep to keep track of, drove everywhere separately in case he had to leave on a call, and annually rounded up their stuffed animals to store in his truck in case a sick child needed comfort.

“Why not just buy new ones?” Michelle asked once.

“These ones have more love in them,” he replied.

Despite holidays missed, Michelle and the girls understood that giving up his time to offer a helping hand wasn’t just Nelson’s passion — it was his way of life.

When he died in a house fire two and a half years ago at age 47, the service that defined his life also marked his last act.

In one final display of kindness, his family followed through on his wishes to have his tissues, veins, valves and bones donated. To date, those tissues have gone on to help as many as 100 people live fuller, richer lives.

Nelson — as Mike was known — will be honored Sunday with a portrait on the hood of Iowan Joey Gase’s car during the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Iowa Speedway. Gase has featured images of organ donors and recipients on his car for years to honor his mother, who became an organ donor after a brain aneurysm took her life.

As a huge fan of the young racer, Nelson “would have loved this,” Michelle says with a sigh, leaning into the late afternoon sun.

Losing the love of her life at 46 was like having the family’s anchor cut out from under them. The threesome weathered storms and floated along the waves of heartbreak for a while before they slowly started building up emotional ballast.

Today, Michelle feels moored enough to break the silence she’s kept since discovering thick black smoke filling her home like heat in a hot air balloon. Newly a trio, the women have come into port, and they’re marking this weekend as the official start of the “moving forward” portion of their grief journey.

They’re ready to share Nelson’s core belief: That one choice for good can radiate out like ivy, with branches of decency and leaves of altruism growing further and further toward the sun.  

And they want to add to the #LiveLikeMike movement that sprung up to spread kindness after Nelson’s death.

Now, they hope people will #GiveLikeMike.

'Such a big heart'

The Nelson family had one rule for trips to Walmart: Dad wasn’t allowed to make eye contact.

One passing glance, one farmer wave, and they were in for a four-hour errand, Michelle says with a laugh. 

“He was never the center of attention, but he knew everyone, and everyone knew him,” his daughter Madison pipes in. “He was a social butterfly without being the loudest in the room.”

People just flocked to him, Michelle said. Even the cat, Nemo, liked him most, his younger daughter, Grace, offers.

“He was quirky,” Grace says. When she was in third grade, her dad bought an Eminem album and they listened to it everywhere they went, eventually memorizing the lyrics — well, most of the lyrics. Her dad quickly turned the volume knob down every time the rapper swore, “which was a lot,” she said.

On their last Father’s Day together, Nelson, who worked at the Iowa Donor Network as a tissue recovery specialist by then, vogued with the power washer the family had bought him. Scrolling through the live photos, Grace can’t stop giggling as he throws the nozzle over his shoulder and sports a thousand-watt smile. “He looks like the fifth Ghostbuster,” she says. 

Nelson kept things light, but, for Michelle, his kindness was always the pull.

The pair met in the most Iowa way ever: over the counter of a Casey's in the late '80s. After graduating from Madrid High, she got a job at the gas station in Slater and had one of the best summers of her life before heading to Northwest Missouri State.

There — in the age before cell phones and Facebook messenger — she kept in touch with her former colleague, Nelson, in letters. The notes grew longer and more romantic, eventually including at least a page of hand-written love song lyrics.

“I saw the kindness in him,” she said. “He had such a big heart.”

They married after she finished college and started their family five years later. When she gave birth to Madison, she remembers other people flitting about the room, but Nelson staying calm and cool in the periphery.

He was always there, in the background, even when he wasn’t physically there.

He stopped texting

One of the only times Nelson preferred to be away from his wife was during their daughter’s volleyball games. She is, ahem, a screamer, and to this day, Michelle is sure Nelson learned to keep score so that he had a reason not to sit with her.

On an early September evening just after school started in 2016, Nelson begged off Grace’s game. He had gone to the chiropractor and got called in by the medical examiner’s office, so he decided to stay home before heading out later to a men’s meeting at church.

As she always did, Michelle dutifully texted him scores and updates: “1 to 4,” “12 to 13,” “Grace had two great sets.”  

She didn’t notice that he stopped responding with the usual “yay” or “woo-hoo.” He was at his meeting, she thought, or he had told her earlier that he was cleaning up some spilled deck stain in the basement.

When Michelle drove home later that night, his car was still in the driveway. Weird, she thought. And the house was completely dark. Strange, she said to herself.

Then, she saw the blown-out basement window and all the breath left her body.  

When she opened the front door, smoke billowed out. In a panic, she tried to run in, but the fumes overtook her and she retreated. The fire chief in Polk City — who in pure small-town coincidence earned his paramedic license with Nelson — forced her to the curb and into the arms of a growing body of friends and family.

Nelson and Nemo were later found in the basement where authorities said fumes from the deck stain had built up and been ignited by either a candle or possibly wires from the freezer. Those are all the details she’s ever cared to know, Michelle said, adding she doesn’t need more “visuals” from the worst day of her life.

Nelson was pronounced dead on the scene on Sept. 6, 2016, due to smoke inhalation. 

Reborn in home and heart

In the immediate aftermath, someone whispered to Michelle: “You’ll never be by yourself.”

Their small-town neighbors proved that premonition true, buoying her anchor-less life with food and a GoFundMe and donations of literally anything they could need. (They still have some shampoo bottles in their shower from those contributions two and a half years ago, Michelle laughs.)

More than a thousand people turned out for Nelson's funeral, which was as quirky as her dad. Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart” and Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" blared through their home church’s speakers. Cosmic brownies, the waif of a man’s favorite food, were served afterward like high-class finger foods. And Nemo, the family cat, was buried with his favorite owner. 

Specific memories from that time are blurry for the trio, as though they watched the events through draped windows, but a few moments are indelible.   

For Madison, it was standing at the visitation for five hours. About two and a half hours in, a cousin whispered they should take their high-heels off because mourners were still lined up around the block.

For Grace, it was that each person who came through had a memory of their dad, a full story, not just the “sorry for your loss” canned line.

And for all of them, it was a picture taken the day Nelson died that showed a rainbow over Polk City with an odd cloud formation in the upper right. If you look closely enough, its outlines look like a human with wings. 

It’s Nelson’s angel, Michelle says gently rubbing the edges of the canvas someone printed a copy on. 

“We always thought he was incredible, but we did because he was ours, you know?” Michelle said. “But to know he was incredible to that extent, it showed us he was irreplaceable.”

After the funeral, Michelle went into “robot mode,” a hazard of being a wedding planner. But she had two daughters and a house to rebuild — a house that was currently covered in soot and so soaked with chemicals that the trio could stand in the ruins for only 15 minutes before getting dizzy.  

She met a lot of opposition for rebuilding (or, for that matter, deciding to drive his car), but she kept trying to tell people that she didn’t see this as where Mike lost his life. She saw this home as where they built theirs. Where they brought their kids when they left the hospital. Where those kids took their first steps. Where successes were celebrated and momentary failures mourned.

“I've never had the feeling of, ‘I can't do this,’” Michelle said. “It's more of, ‘I can do this.’ I can get these kids through college, just like what we had planned. I can continue on with what Mike and I had always wanted for them, you know? So that's kind of why I decided to stay, too.”

They redesigned the interior, changed paint colors and moved back in during spring break 2017.

The house, like the family, had been reborn — a true phoenix from the ashes.

#LivelikeMike and #GivelikeMike

Michelle has a hard time remembering when someone brought up that Mike was a donor. She always knew he wanted to donate, and the Donor Network was so on top of it, she never had to worry about it.

But her realization of exactly what good her husband’s choice had done came in a November letter. In shaky, scratchy script a man scribbled that this was the first letter he had ever written, a result of the gift of Nelson's corneas.

Then, they got an update that a baby, just under 1 year old, had received a heart valve. Another heart valve went to a 14-year-old boy.

The letters and the updates came, and they didn’t stop. They still haven’t.  

In Iowa, 72 percent of adults were registered as donors in 2018, according to Donate Life, a nonprofit working to increase donor numbers. That puts the Hawkeye State above the national average of 56 percent and well above New York and Puerto Rico, where the percentage of donors is 32 and 22, respectively.

“I think the more people are educated, the more they realize how easy it is,” Michelle said. “And that it’s not just your heart or kidney, it's everything from tissue to skin to bones that can help people.”

Some view organ donation as a way of extending their loved one’s life here on Earth. That if their tissues are alive in someone else, somehow they live on, too.

Michelle doesn’t see it that way. Her husband has passed away, and, as a Catholic, she’s confident his soul is in heaven. The tissues don’t keep him here; they are the last, best memory of how Nelson lived — and what he gave.

"He always tried to make somebody's day better,” Michelle said. “And I think that a daily simple act of kindness, a daily simple act of caring, could change the world, honestly, or change people's perspective a lot.

“That is what I hope his legacy is,” she added, “one of helping others, serving others, even in the smallest ways.”

Last week, Michelle closed the flower shop she owned for decades. After a lifetime of go, go, going and years of grief, she wants to just breathe. And start, with intention, moving forward — not moving on — without Nelson.

The family lost a lot in the fire, but the cleaning company salvaged what it could. At the time, whatever was Nelson’s stayed where the company put it; in boxes downstairs marked with his name.   

This summer, with the girls home from Iowa State, they are going to go through it all.

Some of it they’ll keep, but most of it will probably be donated.

And that’s just what Nelson would want.

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. She has been an organ donor since she turned 16. You can reach her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.