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.