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The first-grade classroom in a new primary school for gifted children in Catania, Sicily, has been named for Nicholas. The John Dewey Institute, which emphasizes linguistics and international studies, features his story as an example of creative ties between countries. 

The principal, Professor Giuseppe Adernò, a tireless spokesman for organ donation, says “When the organs and corneas of this little American boy went to seven Italians it changed the entire attitude of the country to organ donation.”

Four of Nicholas’ seven recipients are Sicilian: the liver recipient who had a son after the transplant whom she named Nicholas; a kidney recipient, who was only 10 when he was transplanted; and two adults who were saved from blindness.  

Professor Adernò was the principal of another school when Nicholas was killed 27 years ago. In the hallway of that school there were two clocks: one on Italian time, the other on California time, where Nicholas had lived, to remind the students every day that anyone, however small, could help others at any time.  

A new low-priced edition of The Nicholas Effect, the book I wrote of how the shooting of a young boy saved thousands of lives, has just been issued.

“I can think of no book that surpasses The Nicholas Effect in opening the heart,” Bud Gardner, editor of Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul, said of it. The book was the basis for the Jamie Lee Curtis made-for-television movie, “Nicholas’ Gift.“

It includes chapters on how Nicholas was shot and what life is like for our family without him, the trial of his killers, the making of the movie and the extraordinary response to his death around the world. The book can be bought on all the usual online sites. For Amazon, you may click here

On October 1 it will be 27 years since Nicholas died and became a donor. The effect on organ donations in Italy was spectacular. Even in the fourth quarter of 1994, just weeks after he was killed, donation rates went up 20 percent. In the next ten years they tripled, a rate of increase no other country has even come close to. 

Source: “Annual Report on Italian Organ Donation, to December 31 2020; Transplant Information System, Italian National Transplant Center”

(Light green is living donations of kidneys, orange is living donations of a portion of livers.)

The full report (in Italian) is at  https://trapianti.sanita.it/statistiche/attivita/2020_D_ATTIVITA_ORGANI_DX-TX.pdf

     The first words Jamie Lee Curtis said to Maggie Green, the mother of Nicholas Green, the seven-year old California boy who was shot while on a family vacation in Italy, and whom she was going to play in a made-for-television movie, were: “I hope I won’t  let you down, Maggie.”

      I can’t think of any other superstar who would have had the unpretentiousness and sense of involvement to say anything like that. As the mother of two adopted children, Nicholas’ death was a knife in her own heart. Yet she was able to discipline her anguish into a performance that earned her a nomination for an Emmy.

     The movie, “Nicholas’ Gift,” was based on our decision to donate our son’s organs and corneas to seven very sick Italians, four of them teenagers.

     Awareness of the loss of life due to the shortage of donated organs increased all over the world as millions of people understood for the first time that a simple ‘yes’ could save multiple families from devastation. In Italy alone donations tripled in the next ten years, a rate of increase no other country has come close to,

     The movie was made in 1998, four years after Nicholas was killed. It has been seen by around a hundred million people, including forty million in the United States. Les Moonves, then CEO of CBS, said it was the network’s ‘crown jewel.’ In the movie, I am played by Alan Bates.

     A few days ago Jamie told me she is as proud of her performance in that role as anything else in her career. Deservedly. I don’t think anyone watching her working her way from the horror of the shooting to the quiet determination to save the lives of total strangers could remain indifferent to its message of selflessness. It was just how Maggie dealt with it in real life.

    On a street in Rome two or three years after the movie was made, a stranger came up to me and told me he was an extra in it. “We were all  expecting a bigshot Hollywood star but every day she ate in the canteen with the rest of the cast.”

     The genuine article? You bet.

P.S. Jamie, We were married for only ninety minutes but they were some of the most consequential in my life!

Reg Green

(Press release sent to media on September  27, 2020)

As the 26th anniversary of the shooting death of my small son approaches (Nicholas Green, a seven-year old American boy on holiday in Italy was shot during an attempted robbery on September 29, 1994, died on October 1 and his organs and corneas were donated to seven people, four of them teenagers) Italy is on the verge of making the biggest change in how organ donor families and their recipients are treated since 1999.

      A group of legislators in Italy has introduced a bill to allow the two sides to write to each other, if both want to, and eventually meet.

    In an exchange of emails between Dr. Pierpaolo Sileri, the Deputy Minister of Health, and myself he today made this unambiguous statement of support for a change in the law. “The liberalization of the contacts between recipients and donor families is a deed of humanity and civilization, a right and proper act that must find its rightful position in a modification of the current legislation, the law 91/99. This battle can and must be driven forward“.

      In 2016 when I started this campaign with just one friend, Andrea Scarabelli from Rome, no one supported us. The opposition was so strong we called ourselves Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. 

     The dramatic change has happened because the media publicized our arguments and ordinary Italians saw the insensitivity, even cruelty, of the current law that effectively prevents the two sides in a transplant from knowing anything but the most basic facts about each other. Donor families don’t even know if their loved one’s recipients are still alive. Recipients can’t thank the people who rescued them when no one else could. Neither side can even send anonymous letters to the other, however much both want to.

(An article about the Letter to the Italians published by the Italian national newspaper ‘Il Corriere della Sera’)

     In 2016 the whole subject was taboo. Now people all over Italy are asking, ‘If two families with a bond as profound as this want to contact each other why should some bureaucrat be able to say no?’ Feelings like this (for example, one bereaved father, Marco Galbiati of Lecco collected 50,000 signatures calling for a change in the law when his 15-year old son, Ricky, died in 2017) and pressure from the media forced the National Transplant Center to refer the subject to the National Bioethics Committee. 

      But before proposing a change in the law committee members needed to see hard evidence, not just strong personal feelings. To them we sent data showing that in the United States tens of thousands of transplant families have written to each other and a minority of them have met. In the great majority of cases, the health authorities say, the results have helped the happiness and health of both sides. 

      After careful consideration, the Committee concluded that the liberalization of the communications was possible, on the lines we proposed, a huge breakthrough. Dr. Carlo Petrini, the National Institute of Health representative on the committee, later described the hard evidence we presented as “a major if not decisive” reason for their recommendation.

   That surprise decision has persuaded many other eminent names to support our cause.  Donor families may soon have the opportunity to end a lifetime of uncertainty by hearing directly from people whose lives they saved. 

     There is no feeling quite like contacting your loved one’s recipients: amazement that people whose lives were coming an end are now playing sports, starting careers and having babies, pride that you turned outward to help others when the pressure to turn inward in grief and despair was almost overwhelming and comfort that someone you loved has done so much to make the world a better place. I hope the bill will be passed with widespread support.”

Here is the full statement by Sen. Dr. Pierpaolo Sileri, Deputy Minister of Health in Italy:

  “The liberalization of the contacts between recipients and donor families is a deed of humanity and civilization, a right and proper act that must find its rightful position in a modification of the current legislation, the law 91/99. This battle can and must be driven forward, creating a structured system that, beyond the law, can guide recipients and donor families through their grief process. I want to thank once again Nicholas’ family who, without their faith in humanity and will to contribute to our emancipation as persons, wouldn’t have ever pursued the path of the gift and the campaign for a liberalization. It means having your neighbor at heart and waging a battle like Don Quixote, as Reg Green, Nicholas’ father, says in his own words. I know very well the battles against the windmills and I want to support in a productive way and manus legis (through the law) a modification of the 91/99 law – a law that by now is outdated/obsolete. Together we are stronger and more human, as Nicholas and his family taught us.”

Article by Reg Green on “Il Corriere della Sera”, Health insert, June 25 2020

“Some of these relationships are among the most fulfilling I have seen anywhere. Why would we want to inhibit that?”

The complete text in English:

   Imagine opening a letter from a stranger that starts, “Your son’s heart saved my life.”

     For the first time you realize what a profound difference you made when, instead of turning inward when your own child was declared brain dead, you gave life to someone you could not even visualize. Now you have living proof that instead of that heart being buried it is likely to give a more or less normal life to someone who, going to bed at night, had never known if he would wake up in the morning.

     Much the same is true of all the other organs and tissue. It’s true, many families don’t want to contact the other side but for those who do the experience is usually electrifying. In the United States thousands and thousands of organ donor families have received letters and the institutions overseeing organ donation are unanimous in believing that in the great majority of cases the contact has improved not just the donor family’s health and happiness but those of the letter-writer’s too.

     Saying thank you is the first step for recipients being able to deal judiciously with the feeling of guilt many of them feel in being alive only because someone else has died. But then to hear from the donor family what virtually all of them think — “Please keep healthy. We want our loved one’s gift to have the best possible result” — can demolish guilt as nothing else can.

     Even more important, none of the problems opponents of change forecast — such as the psychological damage to families who don’t like each other — has ever affected more than a small number of cases.

     The letters are anonymous and carefully vetted by the families’ health advisers. If the other side does not want to reply, that is the end of it. If they do reply, their letter is anonymous too. But if all goes well, as it generally does, the families in time may write freely to each other and, if both of them want to, they can decide to meet.

     Some of these relationships are among the most fulfilling I have seen anywhere. That shouldn’t be a surprise. These families are connected in a way that leaps over all the differences that normally keep us apart: class, age, nationality, religious and political views. Why would we want to inhibit that?

Link to the article online: https://www.corriere.it/salute/20_giugno_29/famiglie-si-sentono-meglio-il-dono-non-deve-diventare-debito-957c2290-b233-11ea-b99d-35d9ea91923c.shtml?refresh_ce-cp