Sunday, January 07, 2007

The Passing of Inspiration

Also from today’s San Francisco Chronicle:
Terrell Hansen, who as a heart transplant recipient and friend of author Michael Connelly inspired the best-selling novel “Blood Work,” has died. He was 65.

Hansen died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications from a previous stroke, said his wife, Linda.

After being diagnosed with heart disease in 1991, Hansen was forced to retire ... as a mechanical engineer at a heavy construction equipment manufacturing company. He was placed on a waiting list for a heart transplant, and became a part-time book dealer.

Hansen met Connelly as a book signing event in 1992 for Connelly’s first novel, “The Black Echo,” and a friendship developed.

Watching Hansen recover from a heart transplant in 1993, Connelly said he realized Hansen “was hit pretty hard by survivor’s guilt, the sense of feeling badly that someone died in order for him to live.”
Read the full obituary here.

(Hat tip to Sarah Weinman.)

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