Saving one life when another ends
Molly Shore
When a gunshot wound took the life of 7-year-old Nicholas Green
during a 1994 family vacation in Italy, his death captured
international headlines after his parents requested his organs and
corneas be donated to ill people in Italy.
“Seven people close to death were given the gift of life,” said
the boy’s father, Reg Green.
That act spurred a worldwide awareness of the shortage of donors,
a phenomenon known as “The Nicholas Effect.”
Green was the keynote speaker at a luncheon Sunday at The Castaway
honoring donor families and recipients. The event was hosted by
OneLegacy, a Southern California organ-transplant network.
Addressing a room filled with 550 people, Green told them that
during his family’s return visit to Italy, they meet all the donor
recipients.
“The door opened and they and their families came in -- some shy,
some smiling, some tearful, some exuberant,” Green said. “I looked at
this mass of humanity and wondered: Did one little body do all this?
And, yes it did.”
Green said the decision he and his wife made changed lives in ways
he could never have imagined.
“In that one moment I saw, as never before, the stunning power of
transplantation,” Green said.
In April 1995, Vicki Carey’s one-month-old son Tyler Jonathan, who
was secure in his car seat as his mother drove, was killed in a car
accident.
When Tyler died, two baby boys at Children’s Hospital benefited
from his lungs and heart.
“If I hadn’t donated, there would be three mothers who lost their
children,” Carey said.
Today, the boys who received Tyler’s organs are happy, healthy
8-year-olds, Carey said.