They called it the Nicholas effect. In 1994, Nicholas Green was seven years old when his family’s dream vacation in Italy turned into the worst nightmare any parent could ever endure. Their car was shot at by bandits, and Nicholas was hit in the head and mortally wounded. Reg and Maggie Green made the decision to donate their child’s organs. The whole world learned about Nicholas, and how his tragic death turned into the gift of life for seven Italians waiting for transplants. Since then, organ donations have tripled in Italy.

Reg Green wrote a book about Nicholas. Jamie Lee Curtis starred as Maggie Green in Nicholas’ Gift and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. In Bodega Bay, where Nicholas lived with his family, there is a memorial tower with 140 bells of all shapes and sizes, the showpiece being a bell almost three feet tall from the Marinelli foundry, which has been making bells for the papacy for a thousand years. Nicholas’ name and the names of the seven Italians he saved are engraved on the bell. Pope John Paul II personally blessed the bell at the foundry.

Myths abound about organ donation, but information dispelling those myths is readily available. Anyone who has seen a terminally ill loved one become healthy again and return to a productive life has good reason to bless the gift of life tendered by a stranger. Nicholas continues to touch the lives of his family as they work through the Nicholas Green Foundation to encourage organ donation and to share the stories of recipients and the families of donors.

Image of Nicholas Green memorial bell by Angusparker. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Nicholas’ heart kept beating until 2017. Most of his other organs continue to give life to his recipients.

His name lives on in Italy, where parks, gardens, squares, streets, and schools are named after him. The girl who received his liver grew up to have a son named Nicholas. The Greens will never stop grieving for their little boy, but Reg Green shared how he felt when he met the recipients of Nicholas’ organs.

Let his poignant words speak for all those who give and receive the gift of life

“When the doors opened and the six walked in, the effect was overwhelming,” he says, noting that illness prevented one from being present. “Some were smiling, some were tearful, others were bashful but they were all alive. Most of these people had been on the point of death. That’s when it hit you for the first time, just how big a thing this was.

“There was also a sense of how the parents and grandparents would have been devastated. You got the feeling there were many more people involved whose lives would have been much poorer if we hadn’t saved them.”

Organ donation makes an extraordinary difference and is something everyone should consider.

Pandra Selivanov is the author of The Pardon, a story of forgiveness based on the thief on the cross in the Bible.