Family of Nicholas Green Settles in LCF; Looks Ahead to Future

Greens head up foundation furthering the cause of organ, tissue donation around the globe

Maggie and Reg Green, along with children, 14-year-old Eleanor and the twins, Laura and Martin, 8, are newcomers to the city of La Cañada Flintridge. The moving van deposited their belongings, not quite a month ago, from their longtime oceanfront home at Bodega Bay in Northern California.

Eleanor has just started her sophomore year at La Cañada High School. Laura and Martin are students at La Cañada Elementary.

On a hot afternoon this week at their hilltop home with its sweeping view across the valley, framed artwork was propped up against the walls waiting to be hung, some of it painted by Maggie. The Greens were making a valiant effort to sort out all the material pieces of their lives from the boxes they were unpacking, but also they were reflecting on their shared memories of their home by the sea.

Although the newly unpacked belongings were placed here and there, one photo took prominence in the family room where they were sitting. It was a silver-framed photo of their eldest son Nicholas at the age of 7 - the year he was killed in an incident that made the news worldwide. Today, Sept. 9, would have been his 17th birthday.

The year of Nicholas’ death was 1994. The family, consisting then of Reg, Maggie, Nicholas and his sister Eleanor, who was 4 at the time, were traveling in Italy. According to Reg Green, they were driving on the autostrada, south of Naples, towards Sicily.

It was nighttime as their car sped along the usually well-traveled road. The two children were bedded down and asleep in the back seat when their rented car was fired upon by highway robbers who mistakenly thought it was a car carrying jewels from Rome.

As the gun blasts shattered the back window, one of the bullets lodged itself at the base of Nicholas’ brain. Eleanor, who was lying beside him, was untouched and still sleeping.

Once Nicholas was taken to a hospital, the doctors determined that the bullet was so deeply embedded it was impossible to do surgery. All they could hope for would be that he would stabilize and return to consciousness. Two days later Nicholas was diagnosed as brain dead.

“I can remember that sunlit hospital room, with the doctors standing in a group in the corner, leaving my wife, Maggie, and me alone to absorb their terrible news and the thought that came with it: ‘How will I ever get through the rest of my life without him? Never to run my fingers through his hair again, never to tickle him or hear him say “Goodnight, Daddy,”’” Green said.

“We sat there numbly for a few more moments. Then one of us - we don’t remember which but, knowing her, I’d guess Maggie - said, ‘Now that he’s gone, shouldn’t we donate the organs?’ and the other said, ‘yes.’ And that was all there was to it. Although we are not a gloomy family and still laugh a lot, every morning when I wake I know life will never have the sparkle it had when Nicholas was alive. But we have never had a moment’s regret about our decision.”

Green said that if they had any regrets in their decision to donate Nicholas’ organs, they would have been banished when they later met seven of the organ recipients, four of them teenagers. Green said that none of the four teens had too much longer to live because of their illnesses, two of the adult recipients were going blind and the third, a diabetic, whose entire central nervous system was disintegrating, was barely able to see.

The tragic story of this American family, and the death of young Nicholas, not only caught the attention of the Italian press, but was reported on television and in newspapers around the globe.

“What Reg and I usually talk about, write about, and make videos that go where we can’t, is the problem of the shortage of organ donors. We’ve learned that although 90 percent of people favor organ donation, only 50 percent say yes when asked at the critical time in some hospital room. It seemed like such a simple, natural decision for us when Nicholas died,” said Maggie Green. “We would have done anything we could to keep him alive, however limited his life might have been. But once he was brain dead we could understand that Nicholas wasn’t in that body anymore. We were grateful that Nicholas’ body would be able to help someone else to live.”

She went on to say there were two surprises that came out of their donor decision. One was the impact that it had in Italy and in the United States. “The Italian prime minister asked to see us, the president of Italy flew us home in his own aircraft,” she recalled. “An honor guard of soldiers accompanied Nicho-las’ body home in a military aircraft. How proud he would have been of that! It seemed as though the whole of Italy wanted to embrace our family.”

Schools, streets, and parks in Italy have been named for Nicholas. Organ donation rates in Italy have almost tripled since the death of Nicholas. “Literally thousands of people are alive today who would have died. It’s quite a legacy for a 7-year-old boy,” said Nicholas’ mother.

Now Donor Advocates

Today, in the memory of Nicholas, the family is focused on being donor advocates. They travel the world to speak about the importance of organ, donation. Nicholas’ sister Eleanor has made numerous trips back to Italy with her family. This past May, she traveled there with her father when he speaking about donations. She had her own time to express her thoughts when she was interviewed on television.

“I think of Nicholas every day,” said Eleanor. “He has changed me in so many ways, before and after the tragedy. In these past 10 years I have gone from the youngest child to the only child, and now to the oldest child. I am sometimes asked what my biggest regret is. When I hear my family, our friends, his teachers, and everyone who knew Nicholas talk about what he was like, I regret not seeing him how I should have. I always thought of him just as my mean older brother who wouldn’t let me play Robin Hood with his friends.

“My strongest memory was the constant confusion I had for the next few months after his death,” she continued. “I didn’t understand why (in Italy) we were riding in police cars everywhere. Why were Italian women pinching my cheeks while weeping? Why couldn’t I go out on the balcony of our hotel without pictures being taken of me? I knew the whole time Nicholas was not going to come back, but why us? I couldn’t understand why people cared about this death and not others. Sometimes I still wonder about this question, but I feel so grateful for all the support we’ve been given for ten years now.

“In retrospect, he was inquisitive and smart, but always brave,” Eleanor said. “He often claimed he would ride through the streets of Italy one day as the crowd applauded him for conquering the opponent in the war. They would name streets, parks and schools after him. I would laugh at that and think he had been reading too much Julius Caesar. We didn’t know it then, but he was right. Except he didn’t win the war; he won our hearts.”

Reg Green remembers well the first meeting with the recipients of organs donated by Nicholas. “We first met our recipients and their families just a few months after the shooting, when our grief was still agonizingly raw. But that meeting, which both of us had to steel ourselves to attend, was explosive. A door opened and in came this mass of humanity, some smiling, some tearful, some ebullient, some bashful, a stunning demonstration of the momentous consequences every donation can have. We now think of them as an extended family. We’ve watched the children grow and leave school and get their driver’s licenses and the adults go back to work. One of them, 19 year-old Maria Pia Pedala, in a coma with liver failure on the day Nicholas died, bounced back to good health, married and has since had a baby boy. And, yes, they have called him Nicholas.”

The death of this young boy has captured the empathy and imagination of scores of people worldwide. A bell tower, inspired by Nicholas’ death, conceived and built by a San Francisco sculptor, Bruce Hasson, was designed to be a memorial accessible to everyone a place where children would feel at ease.

Reg says that its delicacy reflects both the preciousness and fragility of young life. Many families visit it to give thanks for their children, others find some solace for a loss. For those traveling in the area the bell tower can be found on the west side of Route 1, 1 1/2 miles north of Bodega Bay.

The centerpiece is a majestic bell, 30 inches high, from the Marinelli foundry in Italy, which has been making bells for the papacy for a thousand years. Nicholas’ name and the names of the seven recipients are on it, and Pope John Paul II went to the foundry to bless it. Whenever the wind blows, as it often does on this exposed coast, the bells chime, sometimes a few at a time, emphasizing the solitude of the surroundings, sometimes an entire orchestra, sounding like happy children at play.

Maggie shared this piece she wrote Sept. 9, 2000: “Nicholas would have turned 13 today. A teenager! And what a thing to become a teenager in the year 2000. As with all six birthdays since he died it’s a day for thinking about what might have been. I look extra long and hard at 12 or 13-year-old boys, wondering. How tall would he be now? Would he be tall and thin? Taller than his dad? Or would that growth spurt be still to come?

“But even more important, what would he be like: Would he still like school? Would he still be interested in history? Would he still go for walks with his dad? I know he’d be much too old to dress up any more, but what would it be now? Acting? Video games? Skate boards? He never was a kid who did what all the others were doing, so I’ve no idea. He couldn’t be as trusting at 13 as he was at six, but I hope he’d still love the truth. And still love his family.

“As the years pass, and the gap between Nicholas as he was and Nicholas as he would have been gets larger and larger. It gets harder to say, ‘Nicholas would have liked that.’”

Although 10 years have passed since Nicholas’ death, telephone calls, letters, and e-mail messages continue to come to the Green family from all parts of the world. So many lives have been touched by the tragedy and story of this young boy and his courageous family.

In 1999 Reg wrote a book, “The Nicholas Effect.” It is now out of print but excerpts from the book can be found on the Nicholas Green Foundation’s Web site www.nicholasgreen.org. The Green family also cooperated in making a television movie, “Nicholas’ Gift,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis.

The foundation, set up by the Green family, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering the cause of organ and tissue donation around the world. It does this by spreading information to increase awareness of the shortage of donors everywhere. It can also support a broad range of children’s causes.

Among other current projects, the foundation funds an annual program in which the National Association for Gifted Children offers an award to an outstanding young student in every state. It produces videos, helps organize special events and has made grants to help doctors from Italy study the latest transplant techniques in the United States.

The Greens travel the United States and the world giving speeches to audiences of all kinds - schools, professional conferences, hospitals, community clubs, etc.

In the upcoming 2005 Rose Parade, Reg, Maggie and Eleanor Green will be aboard the float presented by the organization, Donate Life. They will join 23 people from across the U.S. to demonstrate how many families benefit from the gift of organ and tissue donations. Spearheaded by Coalition on Donation member OneLegacy, the Donate Life Rose Parade float is supported by more than 50 official partners from across the nation, including organ and tissue recovery organizations, for-profit contributors, transplant centers and transplant recipient organization.

The float, “Many Families, One Gift,” will present a park scene in full blossom with families enjoying the simple pleasures of everyday life. The scene will be accented by symbols of life, including water flowing in a fountain, a bridge linking people together, and a full-grown tree.

“We were invited to be in the parade by OneLegacy, the group that oversees all organ and tissue donation in the greater Los Angeles area. Their float, with both donor families and recipients on it, is a dramatic way of showing tens of millions of people how a simple decision can save multiple lives. Hopefully, many people who see it will say to their families: ‘If anything happens to me, I’d like you to do that for me,’” said Reg. He, Maggie and Eleanor Green will be aboard the float, “Many Families, One Gift,” which will present a park scene in full blossom with families enjoying the simple pleasures of everyday life. The scene will be accented by symbols of life, including water flowing in a fountain, a bridge linking people together, and a full-grown tree.

For more information about the Rose float and organ and tissue donations Web site, sign on to www.onelegacy.org.