‘The Nicholas Effect:’ New memorial bench offers a point of inspiration
It’s Friday morning and La Cañada’s Reg Green treks a mile and a half up a dusty trail from the Angeles Crest Fire Station to a point off the Mt. Lukens Fire Road that offers breathtaking views of the L.A. Basin below.
It’s a trip he makes several times a week, typically near daybreak, a constitutional custom-made for a lifelong lover of mountain trails. As with any routine, hiking La Cañada’s breathtaking slopes can be for the 87-year-old Green a meditative act, a quiet supplication to the surrounding nature.
But whenever he meets another hiker on the trail, Green is apt to engage in polite conversation. And before too long the subject of his son Nicholas inevitably comes up.
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On Sept. 29, 1994, the Greens were vacationing in Italy when their car became pursued by robbers. The family escaped, but 7-year-old Nicholas was shot. Two days later, their son on life support, the Greens made the heart-wrenching decision to donate their young son’s organs.
“The emotion is still very white hot,” he says.
Now an international spokesman on the restorative power of organ donation to heal the lives of not only recipients but families like his own, Green openly shares his story with anyone who will listen.
In 2013, such a conversation with local firefighter Matt Davidson, who worked at the time out of the Angeles Crest station, inspired Davidson to erect a tribute to Nicholas — an unmarked wooden bench at the vista point Green frequented.
“The first day I got up there, I turned the corner and there it was,” Green recalls. “My heart overflowed.”
For a few years, the bench offered hikers respite. But over time the back fell off and was wired back on, and visitors or vandals may have broken some of its slats. Fellow La Cañada resident and trail lover Farhad Motia, who like Green visits the area regularly, noticed that the bench he and his wife often used to cool their heels and have a snack was looking the worse for wear.
But it wasn’t until Motia met Green one day, and heard the story of Nicholas, that he felt compelled to replace that dilapidated little bench.
“When I heard [Green’s] son was just 7 years old ... I couldn’t stand it; this was the least I could do,” Motia says. “I can’t imagine losing a child, and I can’t imagine having the mindset, in that moment, to decide to save others.”
Motia sought the appropriate permits and enlisted the help of brother Frank and son Matthew in installing a new bench made of durable composite material. By August, the new bench was ready to receive its first weary travelers.
Unlike the previous bench, the Motias added a small brass plaque to their gift.
“For Nicholas Green/ 1987-1994/ Organ Donor,” it reads.
“Maybe people will go see it and look up Nicholas,” Frank Motia says. “[Green’s] a good man. He deserves to have something good done for him.”
Green says the gesture is one more way for his son’s spirit to live on. And it provides more opportunities for those who encounter it to consider Nicholas’ too-short life, and to contemplate for themselves the wider impact organ donation can make.
As if on cue, a group of women hike down from the trail above and see Green standing by the new bench. They say their polite hellos and, upon learning that the man before them is the father of the name on the plaque, begin asking questions.
“I love this bench,” one woman says. “We always stop here on the way up.”
“That’s good to know,” says an appreciative Green.
When they hear the story, they want to know more. La Cañada resident Teresa Butier gives Green her email address so the two can stay in touch. This is exactly how what Green has come to call “The Nicholas Effect” — also the title of a book the former U.K. Telegraph reporter wrote about his family’s experiences — has continued nonstop for the past 22 years.
“It doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen. There’s that spark,” Green says.
“A group of people now know a story. Most of them probably won’t do anything, maybe a few will,” he continues. “And one might do something quite large. It’s out of these little pebbles that a whole wall has been built.”
To learn more about Green’s story and lifelong mission, visit nicholasgreen.org.
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
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