Children's Bell Tower in Bodega Bay

We recently visited the Children's Bell Tower in Bodega Bay for the first time. It's a beautiful monument inspired by the 1994 shooting in Italy of seven-year-old Nicholas Green of Bodega Bay, and is dedicated to children everywhere.

Fifteen years ago, Nicholas was killed by highway robbers while vacationing in Italy with his family. His parents, Reg and Maggie Green, agreed to donate his organs and corneas, which went to seven Italians waiting for transplants, four of them teenagers. As a result, organ donations in Italy have since quadrupled and thousands of people have been saved.

Click to enlarge images.

The memorial was conceived and designed by Bruce Hasson, a Bay Area sculptor. It's 18 feet high and holds 140 bells, almost all of them sent by Italians: school bells, church bells, ships' bells, mining bells, cow bells. Some bells had been in families for generations, others were made especially for this project. The centerpiece is a large bell, thirty inches high, from the Marinelli foundry in Italy, which has been making bells for the papacy for a thousand years. Nicholas' name and the names of the seven recipients are on it, and Pope John Paul II went to the foundry to bless it.




Reg and Maggie Green hold a picture of their son Nicholas in this 1999 photo.


Reg Green's book about the death of Nicholas and the world's amazing response is titled The Nicholas Effect. You can read more about it at NicholasGreen.org."No matter their nationality or calling, people respond from the heart--presidents, movie stars, schoolchildren, grandmothers, Boy scouts, soccer players, surgeons, and organ recipients," says Reg. "Organ donor cards are signed. Poems are written, pictures painted, parks dedicated, scholarships established, medals given, children hugged."

The media interest was intense from the beginning, as the book relates, with virtually every major daily paper in the world carrying the story and the major television shows, including Oprah, Barbara Walters, Katie Couric and Tom Brokaw, interviewing the family. There was even a CBS movie of the week, Nicholas’ Gift, for which Jamie Lee Curtis was nominated for an Emmy.

Last month, on the 15th anniversary of this tragedy, the Press Democrat ran a poignant letter from Reg Green, Life through a child's death, 15 years ago today.

The Children's Bell Tower is located behind the Community Center, on the ocean side of Hwy 1, about 1.5 miles north of downtown Bodega Bay. Nicholas’ grave is in St. Teresa's cemetery in the nearby town of Bodega.

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