Tim Raymond, 13, died after waiting for months for a transplant. Now, his parents hope to get people thinking about organ donation before they’re faced with the unthinkable.

Tina Raymond hadn’t given much though to child organ donation before her 13-year-old son was hooked up to an oxygenation machine at the hospital, waiting for a lung transplant.

Tim died in March just after receiving a new set. his own lungs, the strong, healthy lungs of a growing athlete, had been turned to "mush," as doctors put it, by a freak combination of H1N1 and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.

Tim’s family believes he would still be alive had he not been further weakened by months of waiting for a transplant. Now, through a nonprofit named in his memory, the Raymonds are working to get people considering organ donation before they’re faced with the unthinkable.

In Pennsylvania, 283 children under 18 and 8,431 people overall were registered on the organ donation waiting list as of last month, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Warriors for Tim" will be out in force at the Phillies game on Monday, which is Citizens Bank Park’s Organ Donation Awareness Night and the six-month anniversary of Tim’s death. three hundred people dressed in orange are expected, waving "Warriors for Tim"-emblazoned battle towels and selling raffle tickets to raise money for a fitness center at the Gift of Life Family House for families of people undergoing transplants

The event is hoped to help the group establish a brand to help spread the word and collect contributions for the fitness center, Tina Raymond said.

"Warriors for Tim" started when family in Delaware hosted a benefit dinner under that heading with the slogan, "Organ donation: Share your life."

Today, the initiative that emerged has raised just more than half of the $100,000 it hopes to put toward building the fitness center at the organ and tissue donation center’s Family House. While Tim was at the hospital, the winter was cold and snowy, CHOP didn’t have a workout facility for families and the Raymonds, both runners, could have used a way to work off stress and still be near their son, Tina Raymond said.

A workout center such as the one planned at the Family House "would have been huge for us," she said.

Once that fundraising goal is met – by April, they hope – Raymond said "Warriors for Tim" will move on to new causes. first on the list: raising money for families at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania transplant center who struggle to pay the bills during someone’s months-long hospitalization.

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After spending four months at their son’s bedside, it’s a cause close to the Raymonds’ hearts.

On the Friday before Halloween last year, Tim, an Unami Middle School seventh-grader who played football, basketball and baseball, came home from school and said he didn’t feel well.

Tim never left the Philadelphia hospital. he died in March.

"We hope that through widespread education each individual can make an informed decision about organ donation before being faced with an emergency situation and choose to give the gift of life," according to Warriors for Tim’s mission statement. "We hope parents will talk with their children and help them to make an informed choice about organ donation. the wait is longer in general for children.

"While our son Tim did receive a donor, his body had struggled for so long that he was not strong enough to make it through the surgery. We firmly believe that our son would be with us today if only a donor had been found sooner."

Raymond said she and her husband, John, had always been organ donors themselves, though she didn’t understand the urgency until faced with the need for one.

She hopes to give parents something to consider – allowing their children to become donors if they would accept organ donations on their own children’s behalf.

There’s no one sheet of paper to sign that makes a child a donor, but parents can sit down with, say, their middle-schooler and ask about what they’d want.

"you can’t make a snap decision when you’re in a crisis situation," she said.

For children younger than 18, organ donation requires parental consent, said John Green, Gift of Life’s director of community relations.

Families will be approached about organ donation if their child is brain dead. though parents make the final call, older teenagers have a chance to indicate their wishes on their driver’s licenses, and children 10 or older can also say whether or not they want to be organ donors on state ID cards, Green said.

Often, the first time the topic comes up is when a child has been in an accident.

"so many times, it catches families off guard," he said.

On the other end, families of young children – maybe five, 8 years old – are waiting for an organ. They aren’t under any illusions about where it’s going to come from.

"They are so grateful that another family in such a tragic situation said yes, to save their child’s life," Green said.

Annie Tasker can be reached at 215-345-3187 or atasker@phillyBurbs.com