Fr. Edmund Luciano SOUTH BRUNSWICK — Fr. Edmund Luciano was a healthy 23-year-old studying to be a priest when, feeling weak and tired, he went to the doctor.
He thought he might have the flu, but he was stunned when the doctor told him he had congestive heart failure.
“I had no experience being sick. One week you are fine, and the next you walk into a clinic and the doctor says, ‘Go straight to the hospital,’” recalled Luciano of St. Augustine of Canterbury in Kendall Park.
When after a few weeks the South Brunswick resident failed to respond to treatment, he “thought I had come to the end of the time I was allotted on this earth.”
He eventually went to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, where he was put on a heart device and listed for a heart transplant.
Just an hour after being listed, a heart became available from 12-year-old Najeeb Green-Lewis, who was struck and killed by a drunk driver. Najeeb lived in Winslow at the time and was on his way to get ice cream when he was killed.
“In their tragedy, Najeeb’s family made the decision to save lives. I will forever be grateful and will always be filled with gratitude and admiration,” Luciano said.
The priest eventually met the family, including Najeeb’s father and grandmother.
Family members came to Luciano’s first mass at St. Augustine of Canterbury Church in South Brunswick, and Najeeb’s picture was placed on the altar.
“As a priest, you are at the bedsides when tragedy strikes and you see families wrap their hearts and minds around the unexpected. It gives you a greater appreciation for the decision Najeeb’s family made in that moment,” Luciano said.
As he got to know the family, Luciano learned that Najeeb had grown up in South Brunswick, the same town where he grew up.
He also learned the 12-yearold’s liver saved a 55-year-old man in Pennsylvania and his kidneys saved a 61-year-old man and a 30-year-old man.
Luciano said he mourns Najeeb and believes he can honor the child’s legacy by living a good and honorable life in service to others.
For Najeeb’s family, knowing their young boy saved lives has given them some solace in the face of tragedy.
“We didn’t know much about organ donation, but I thought, ‘Why don’t we donate his organs?’ A part of him will live on to help someone else,” said Najeeb’s grandmother, Monica Durell.
She said after Najeeb died she was stunned by something she noticed he had etched earlier on a dirty window of a van: Najeeb4Life.
“He saved four lives,” she said. “He was helping people when he was living and he is helping people after his death.
“I think [Luciano] was supposed to get Najeeb’s heart. … We know that Fr. Edmund has a good heart. He is blessed because Najeeb was everything to us.”
Luciano will address fellow clergy as well as medical professionals and the public about organ donation during a series of events sponsored by the New Jersey Sharing Network during National Donor Sabbath observed annually in November.
For more information on organ donation, visit www.NJSharingNetwork.org.