FREEHOLD - In many ways, Walter Zuber and John Patrick lived parallel lives.

Both hailed from Pennsylvania coal country, where family members worked in the mines. Both served in the military after World War II, then enrolled at Villanova University. They met playing football for the Wildcats in the early 1950s, Walt as a back and John as an end.

That bond carried a long way. After college they moved to the Jersey shore, became high school coaches and educators, and raised families a few miles apart. Their kids grew up together.

Patrick died in 2004 and Zuber in 2013. Last month, those parallel lives intersected in a profound way. Patrick’s daughter Karen donated a kidney so Zuber’s daughter Susan could receive a transplant after five years of kidney failure and dialysis.

“Mom said it first,” Susan Zuber said. “This was Jack and Walt colluding to take care of their daughters.”

It sprang from seeds planted long ago on the gridiron. This was one heck of a point after.

Said Walter’s wife Bunny Zuber, now 87: “Isn’t it amazing, how everything came full circle?”

Pigskin roots

Villanova is known for basketball, but the Wildcats have a respectable football history. The 1951 team with Zuber and Patrick went 5-3, beating perennial power Army, Penn State and Alabama while losing at Kentucky, Boston College and LSU. Old newspaper photos show Zuber running over opponents and Patrick defending passes thrown by All-American Babe Parilli.

Both later coached the sport before becoming administrators. Zuber served as the first principal at Southern Freehold High (now Howell) and Freehold Township. He retired as assistant superintendent of the Freehold Regional district and was known as one of New Jersey’s top high school basketball officials. Patrick became Lakewood’s superintendent of schools and a civic icon in the town; the John F. Patrick Sports Complex on Vine Ave. is named in his honor.

“They were such good men in every way,” Bunny Zuber said.

Those traits got passed down. Susan Zuber served as a nonprofit manager for three decades in Washington, D.C. before returning to Freehold to care for her ailing father a few years back. Now 61, she remains there with Bunny.

In recent years, Susan's kidneys went. Four decades earlier, she survived a near-fatal car wreck. The anti-inflammatory drugs prescribed in the aftermath, she said, “compromised my kidneys.”

For five years, Zuber underwent dialysis three days a week, four hours at a time. She got on a transplant list. Five times, a hospital called and said it had a match. Five times, it proved to be a false alarm.

Compelled to help

For decades, undergoing a kidney transplant meant finding the right biological match from a living donor or cadaver. A national program known as paired kidney exchange has made the search easier. It’s a donation “chain,” so to speak.

When Karen Patrick Mackolin, a 63-year-old retired speech therapist living in Manchester, found out she could help Zuber get a kidney by donating hers even though they weren’t a match, she opted in.

“I’m not a brave person; I’m not an adventurous person,” Patrick Mackolin said. “But from the beginning, I felt compelled to help.”

Patrick Mackolin filled out the paperwork, and on July 16 — the 40th anniversary of Susan Zuber’s car accident — they got a call scheduling their surgeries at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. Karen’s kidney went to Washington, D.C. and Susan’s new kidney came from Boston.

“Overwhelmed, thankful and kind of in shock that this really could be happening,” Susan Zuber said of her reaction. “There are not enough words to say, ‘thank you.’”

Both women recovered nicely, and Susan is off dialysis. They want to spread the word about paired kidney exchange. It’s something their fathers would be proud of, no doubt — the ultimate lead block in the trenches.

In a text message to Susan’s sister Pam shortly before the surgery, Karen crystalized the full-circle nature of this act of kindness.

“Outside of blood relatives, the relationship between our parents was probably the best model of friendship I grew up with — and emulated without even knowing it,” she wrote. “I am ever grateful for that because it has served me well.”

Staff writer Jerry Carino: jcarino@gannettnj.com.