Organ donor Tom Cutinella honored by St. Charles Hospital a decade after his football death

When Tom Cutinella went to get his driver’s permit after he turned 16, he told his parents he wanted to become an organ donor.

Just three months later, in October 2014, Cutinella died tragically in a Shoreham-Wading River High School football game. His distraught parents nonetheless carried out his wishes, and allowed parts of his body to be transplanted to others to save their lives.

Nearly a decade later, Cutinella on Friday was the center of an effort to encourage more people to become organ donors to address a shortage on Long Island and throughout the state.

At St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, where Cutinella was born, hospital officials, an organ recipient, Cutinella’s relatives, and others urged the public to sign up.

“Tom is one of those selfless heroes whose legacy lives on,” said James O’Connor, president of the hospital. “As a multi-organ donor, Tom saved the lives of many.”

Cutinella, who was a junior in high school when he died of a traumatic brain injury after colliding with another player, donated his heart, both kidneys, his liver, his pancreas, both corneas, and numerous bones and skin tissues, O’Connor said.

There is a shortage of organs available for transplant, with the greatest need being for kidneys, said Karen Cummings, a senior manager at LiveOnNY, a federally recognized nonprofit that is the main organ transplant agency in New York State.

Kidneys account for 70% of organ transplants, she said. But the wait to receive one is on average 5½ to 7 years. Only about 44% of people in the state are registered to be organ donors, she said.

The wait would be vastly reduced if more people signed up, she said. People can do so at the DMV, through voter registration, or other avenues.

One heart recipient, Ed Schafer, 71, of Riverhead, said the transplant saved his life.

About eight years ago he underwent a quadruple bypass, but two hours after the surgery went into cardiac arrest.

“I was literally seconds from death,” he said.

Doctors implanted a heart pump, which kept him alive until a human heart became available 11 months later.

Today, 7½ years later, he is doing well.

“It was a blessing,” said Schafer, a former postmaster in Laurel. “It changed my life tremendously.”

Kelly Cutinella, Tom’s mother, said in a telephone interview from Georgia where she and her husband now live that they were caught off guard when their son told them at age 16 he wanted to be an organ donor.

“He was just that kind of a kid,” she said. “He was just a kid who was always thinking about other people.”

His parents have remained in touch with some of the recipients of Tom’s organs, including one woman who received his heart and recently had a baby.

“It’s pretty amazing to know that Tom continues on in some miraculous way,” Kelly Cutinella said. “That’s what organ donation is. It’s giving the gift of life others.”

In the lobby of the hospital where the event took place, officials had put up a large color photograph of Tom. When the event ended, they all walked outside to the parking lot and a flagpole.

They lowered the American flag, attached two more banners, and raised them all up high. One said "Donate Life." The other had the number 54.

That was the number of Tom’s jersey on the football team.