Kidney transplant pioneer, a former Grand Forks resident dies in Twin Cities
During Julie Weighter’s eighth-grade year at St. Mary’s in 1962, she became ill and was diagnosed with renal kidney disease, spending four and a half months in Deaconess Hospital in Grand Forks.
7:00 am, Feb. 17, 2021
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Julie Weighter
Former Grand Forks resident Julie Weighter, one of the world's first to survive a kidney transplant, continued defying convention until her death at age 72 on Feb. 5, 2021, in St. Louis Park, Minn.
Besides the kidney transplant when she was 15, Weighter, the daughter of the late Edmund Weighter and Evelyn Ronkowski Weighter, was the first female security guard at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. She also earned two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Minnesota and had a second kidney transplant in 2000.