February 06, 2006
In commemoration of Founder’s Week
2006, Campus
Ministry ran a very special program Monday night on the Queens
campus to increase awareness about what advocates consider the
ultimate act of charity, organ and tissue donation. Reg Green - the
father who donated his son’s organs after the boy was shot in the
head by car robbers, never to regain consciousness, during a 1994
family vacation in Italy - flew in from California to speak prior
to a screening of Nicholas’s Gift, a made-for-TV movie
with Jamie Lee Curtis and Alan Bates.
The movie, aired by CBS, tells the story of Reg and Maggie
Greens’ sudden tragic loss, and their split-second decision — once
their child was declared brain dead — to donate his organs. The
gift of Nicholas’s organs became a gift of life to seven Italian
recipients. A former journalist of British descent, Reg Green, 77,
has made publicizing the need for organ donation his calling after
Nicholas, sleeping in the car his father was driving, was mortally
wounded. (Miraculously, daughter Eleanor, also riding in the back
seat, was unharmed.)
Also speaking at the organ-donation awareness event were two St.
John’s alumni: Margaret Browne Gallagher ’94Ed, Hospital Services
Manager, New York Organ Donor
Network, and retired businessman Frank Badali ’56 School of
Commerce, a volunteer for the Nicholas Green Foundation,
an organization that raises organ donation awareness and supports
children’s causes. Paula Migliore ’98SJC, ’01GEd, Campus Minister
to Athletics, coordinated the program.
Jack Kaiser, St. John’s University Athletic Director Emeritus, who
is a consultant to the University’s Athletics Department, also
attended. He’s been working with Frank Badali on running sporting
events that would benefit the Nicholas Green Foundation.
Alumnus Reaches Out to the
Greens
“When I heard about the circumstances surrounding Nicholas’s death,
I reached out to the family,” says Badali. “I identified with the
Greens because I’ve driven on the same highway in Italy at night
with my daughter in the back seat. The Vincentian Mission instilled
in me at St. John’s has stayed with me all these years.”
Margaret Browne Gallagher, who majored in human services, is one
of eight children from her family who graduated from St. John’s,
and her brother, Brian Browne, is the University’s Assistant Vice
President for Government Relations. “I studied for a career at St.
John’s that helps save lives,” she says.
The need for organ donations remains strong, she adds. “Ninety
thousand people are awaiting transplants in the U.S.,” she says,
“and everyday, 17 people die because they don’t get a transplant in
time. The growing success rate of transplant surgery [85 percent]
makes it one of the most profound miracles in science. The Catholic
Church endorses organ donation, and views it as the ultimate act of
charity.”
Margaret says her organization is trying to increase enrollment
in the New York State organ donor registry. More than 1 million New
Yorkers have registered, mainly through New York’s Registry of
Motor Vehicles, which lists willingness to be an organ donor on a
person’s driver’s license. She recommends that people tell their
families that they are willing to become donors, because the number
of viable donors remains small.
“Things have changed a lot in the past dozen years,” says Reg
Green, commenting on society’s level of awareness. “People still
don’t know, though, about tissue, skin and bone donation; one donor
can aid 50 people.”
Three to four organs can be harvested, on average, from a single
donor, Green points out. “A simple act of kindness can save three
or four families from devastation,” he says. “Not doing anything
may condemn them to a lifetime of sorrow.”