A Son's Legacy

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Ron Deal and his wife Nan are wearing Connor’s Song T-shirts, bearing a sketch by their late son, Connor. Around Nan’s neck are three necklaces: A silver heart inscribed with Connor’s name and the words “You are always in my heart” dangles on a silver chain; the other two pendants reside next to each other on a brown, leather cord, one engraved with the Hebrew word “Selah” and the other with the continent of Africa, a red stone pinpointing the location of Ghana.

Two years ago Ron and Nan Deal’s 12-year-old son, Connor, passed away and the couple was left searching for a way to honor their child and find a way to use money donated to his memorial fund. What makes them an extraordinary couple is that, over time, they’ve transformed their grief into a cause that would carry on their son’s legacy. Connor was a nurturing child, full of energy and creative ideas. He loved children and was a passionate artist and writer who dreamed of becoming the next George Lucas.

“A baseball scholarship in his name?” Nan shakes her head. “It’s not him. It had to be about him.” Ron and Nan never did find a legacy for Connor; “It found us,” Ron professes.

It wasn’t until the one-year anniversary of Connor’s death when Nan received Pam Cope’s memoir, “Jantsen’s Gift,” from the author herself, that a bigger, unforeseen plan was set into motion. Two weeks later, Pam called Nan and the two spoke for four hours, feeling an instant connection, Nan says.

Pam and Randy Cope, founders of Touch A Life Foundation, an organization dedicated to rescuing victims of child trafficking, had also suffered the death of a child. They were also given money to start their son, Jantsen’s, memorial fund and they too were at a loss as to what to do with it until a woman suggested putting it toward building an orphanage in Vietnam.

This past August, Nan found herself at her darkest hour, drowning in her grief when Pam rang her up, and the pieces of this painful puzzle began forming a picture.

“Pam said to me ‘It’s time for you to go to Ghana’ and I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! I’m not going to Ghana. I am so broken right now and you want me to go be a missionary and help children?” she tells me, pain etched on her face. “It just kind of came full circle.”

In November, Nan traveled to Ghana for two weeks and she, Pam and the rest of the team took boats onto Lake Volta where children are sold into slavery and forced to dive into crocodile-and-eel-infested waters to detangle fishing nets and repair boats.

The island in the middle of Lake Volta, what Nan describes as “National Geographic territory,” is where the women and female children are enslaved, indentured to lives of domesticity and sexual abuse. When one of the members of the group took off her shirt with the name of her daughter on it, Hope, and put it on a naked girl, it struck deep in Nan’s heart.

“Amidst these dirty, filthy, naked children there’s this one little girl with a shirt that says ‘Hope’ and I believe there is hope there,” she affirms.

Nan and the group rescued two brothers that day, Godsway Jr., 6, and Gideon, 8, who had previously been returned to their families then promptly sold back into slavery. They took the two boys back to camp where Nan passed out gifts: Connor’s Song backpacks filled with art supplies and the T-shirts that bear his name.

Before Nan returned to the United States, the Wolflin Elementary tutor realized she had found her calling. The children cried out to her, “God sent Ma Pam. God sent Ma Nan to rescue me,” and she told them, “God sent Ma Pam to save me out of my dark waters too and they got it. It was an instant shared suffering.”

Since January, the Deals and the Amarillo chapter of Touch A Life have been organizing a 5K in honor of Connor. The proceeds will benefit Touch A Life and go toward building an orphanage and the Connor Deal Creative Arts Center in Gomoa Fetteh, Ghana. The Deals dream of displaying Connor’s art on the walls of the center and housing a Lego’s table, puppet stage, and book and computer centers.

“This is what these kids need,” Nan stresses. “They’ve come out of horrific conditions. They’ve watched children die going down into the water. They’ve been given one meal a day and they’ve been beaten. They work 20 hours a day with a pair of underwear on and their parents sold them for $20. They’ve been through a lot.”

In July, Nan, Ron, their two sons, Braden and Brennan, along with a group that includes three doctors, will travel to Ghana where they intend to set up health screenings for the orphans. They will also bring over a pair of special shoes to accommodate Joel, a young boy stricken with cleft feet.

“We have this suspicion that lots of other parents who have lost children don’t know what to do,” Ron offers. “Our invitation to other grieving parents would be to throw themselves into something that has meaning and connects them to their child and to find that legacy. It certainly doesn’t mean traveling around the globe to do that. But if anybody wants to go to Ghana, they can get in touch with us.”

The Honor Connor Fun Run
Takes place March 5. Check in is at 7:30 a.m. at Bonham Middle School. The 5K begins at 9 a.m. and the 1 Mile begins at 10 a.m. Proceeds will benefit Touch a Life Foundation.
For more information, visit www.RonDeal.org/go/ConnorsSong, www.touchalifekids.org or www.facebook.com/ConnorsSong.

by Drew Belle Zerby

After graduating from LSU in 2009, Drew Belle worked as a page designer in north Louisiana until moving to Amarillo and joining AGN Media in late 2010. In her spare time, she loves to read, travel and spout out useless movie trivia.