Ask anyone who knew him, and they will tell you—23-year-old Autrey was a joy to be around, the kind of person who changed a room the moment he entered it.
“Autrey was the sweetest since the day he was born,” said his mother, Kandi. “He had FoxG1 syndrome and was non-mobile and nonverbal, but he lit up a room with his smiles and giggles. He loved school, shopping, going to truck shows, the Georgia Bulldogs, county fairs, and movie night with mom and dad. He loved life. He loved people, and he loved making them smile and laugh. He changed the world one person at a time.”
His impact on others was impossible to miss.
“A lot of people would come visit and ask, ‘Is Autrey there?’” said his father, Leslie. “The first thing they’d do wouldn’t be to speak to us. They’d go straight to Autrey. Straight to his room.”
Though he never spoke a word, Autrey had a way of communicating that everyone understood.
“At the end of the day, he was just a joy for everybody,” Leslie said. “He didn’t talk back to us, but through his facial expressions and the sounds he made, I knew he was listening. He could tell you everything you needed to know without saying a word. That was pretty much Autrey.”
In the early hours of October 20, 2025, Autrey unexpectedly went into cardiac arrest and passed away. After they arrived home from the hospital, both Kandi and Leslie received a call from HonorBridge to discuss the possibility of tissue donation. Being an organ donor had special meaning in their family—Kandi’s own grandfather had been an organ donor, and her mother had donated a kidney to her sister.
“I immediately said yes,” said Kandi. “We knew that our son would want to help as many people as he could with the body that he could no longer use. The person on the phone was very sympathetic and caring, and she was very delicate with her choice of words. But I just said, with joy in my heart, ‘This is it. This is the way we want to go.’”
Through Autrey’s gift of tissue donation, countless people will experience healing, restored health, and renewed hope in the face of disease, trauma, and injury. Among those whose lives were changed are a 78-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman, both of whom received the gift of sight through Autrey’s corneal donation.
“It warms our hearts so much that he made somebody else’s life better,” said Kandi. “He’s still here somewhere. To know he’s still making somebody smile again or continuing to make somebody smile, it’s tremendous. We buried our son, but another family is starting over. They’ve got a new beginning.”
When asked what Autrey would think about being a tissue donor, both of his parents had no doubt about his answer.
“Autrey depended on us for everything. We fed him, changed him, bathed him, and cared for him every moment of every day,” Leslie said. “But despite all of that, he was the most selfless person I’ve ever known. If we could ask him what he thought about tissue donation, he would tell us, ‘That’s exactly what I would want. You nailed it.’ That’s how much he loved people.”
For families facing the difficult decision of organ donation, Kandi encourages them to look beyond the heartbreak of the moment and consider the lives that could be changed.
“If someone was standing in front of me saying, ‘No, they’re not cutting on my loved one,’ I would hug them and tell them that’s not what this is about,” Kandi said. “Your loved one may be gone, but they can still help other people. They can still make a difference. Donation has helped us through our grief because we know a part of Autrey is still living on. Saying yes was the greatest thing we’ve ever done.”
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