Green family still champions organ gifts

On a fall evening in 1994, Eleanor Green was tucked in the back seat of a rental car with her 7-year-old brother, Nicholas. The siblings were on vacation with their parents, Reg and Maggie Green, touring southern Italy.

A pair of local criminals, on the lookout for a vehicle that was supposed to be traveling the highway with a load of jewelry, opened fire on the family, striking Nicholas.

“Nicholas and I were both asleep at the time of the attack,” Eleanor said. “He obviously didn’t wake up. I didn’t wake up through the attack either. I did wake up a little bit later, because it was so cold with the window blown out. But at the time we didn’t realize that anything was drastically wrong.”

Eleanor, who was just 4 years old at the time, said the hours that followed were a blur of medical personnel and police investigators. When doctors determined their son was brain dead, Reg and Maggie chose to donate Nicholas’s organs.

What the Greens thought to be a very private decision, however, became an international media sensation. The Greens were anointed as national heroes by the Italian public. The family was inundated with letters and flowers from every corner of the country. The Italian president and prime minister visited, and Nicholas’ body was flown home on an Italian military aircraft.

“The one event I remember the most was one morning, probably the second day after it happened, I went out onto the balcony of our hotel and there was a collection of photographers there, probably 20 to 30 of them, who all just started taking my picture,” Eleanor said. “At the time I didn’t really realize what they were after, I just felt like a little celebrity.”

Nicholas’ organs saved the lives of seven Italians, and set in motion a life-long campaign on the part of the Greens to promote organ donation around the world. The Greens, who lived in Bodega Bay, Calif. at the time of the shooting but now live in La Cañada Flintridge, continue to tell the story of Nicholas as a means to champion organ donation, particularly in countries where it is not widely accepted.

Eleanor, a La Cañada High School graduate and currently a political economics major at Pitzer College, made her first solo trip to Italy last week to mark the 15th anniversary of her brother’s death and the donation of his organs. Nicholas’ story continues to resonate with Italians, who refer to him as “piccolo Niccolo,” or “little Nicholas,” she said.

“Italians, they see Nicholas as their own child in some way,” Eleanor said. “They were just so shocked that a family that had been through something terrible would still want to give. They were so touched by it as a population that he hasn’t disappeared from their minds. Almost everyone over 30 still remembers what happened. When you say the name Nicholas Green, they know what you mean.”

So touched were the Italians, in fact, that there are schools, hospitals, streets and parks in Italy named after Nicholas Green. During her week-long stay, Eleanor conducted numerous interviews, including a 30-minute segment on one of Italy’s most-viewed talk shows.

“I have been back to Italy many times, but always with my family,” Eleanor said. “We used to go a lot more in the early days. But this is the first time I had to be fully prepared on my own. There is not a possibility to defer back to my parents [on a question], it was a lot more responsibility.”

Reg Green, who authored a book called “”The Nicholas Effect” and dedicates himself full-time to The Nicholas Green Foundation, joked that he expected there would a flood of marriage proposals in the wake of his daughter’s trip to Italy.

“We are enormously proud of her to have gone alone and to carry the burden,” Reg said. “Everyone remarked on her poise. It is a tough audience. She went to three different cities...and she was constantly meeting new people and press.”

The work of the Green family has paid off. In 1994, the rate of organ donations in Italy was 4.2 per million inhabitants. Today, that number is 18 per million.

“I think that the thing that I have realized about this whole process is that when people do talk about organ donation, they come to realize it is what they do want,” Eleanor said. “But starting that conversation is something that almost never happens. People are afraid to talk about what will happen when they die...Starting that conversation and making it known to your family is the easiest way to increase donations. All that we hope to do by working at this is to make it something that people aren’t afraid to talk about.”