Fort Lee Teen Gets Heart Transplant

A period of a few days in Fort Lee that started with a tragic incident involving the death of a high school student turned a little brighter just days later as one family learned that their 15-year-old son would receive the heart transplant he so desperately needed.

Johnny Damato was born with called Corrected Transposition of the Great Vessels and needed a heart transplant.

At Thursday’s Fort Lee Mayor and Council meeting, Mayor Mark Sokolich, with whom the youth has maintained a close relationship for years, said Johnny received that heart the previous day.

“He got that phone call on Tuesday night at around seven o’clock that a heart became available,” said Sokolich. “And thanks to the escort that was immediately put together by the Fort Lee Police Department, he received a new heart over the course of a 10-hour operation [Wednesday] at Mt. Sinai.”

Sokolich said Johnny is in stable condition at the hospital and that in fact “he just recently texted me a few times.”

In a recent emphasizing the importance of organ donation, Johnny wrote, “Mark Sokolich is and will always be like a father to me. I said it that he is a man that has been there for me every day of this horrible and scary time in my life.”

“We, the governing body, extend our best wishes, and we look forward to seeing you up and about and doing what 16-year-old boys are supposed to be doing, and that’s enjoying life,” Sokolich said Thursday.

But the mayor also acknowledged the , who fell off a cliff in Palisades Interstate Park late Friday night.

“It’s amazing where life takes you,” Sokolich said, choking up slightly. “During the course of any particular week, you can experience some of the best and most positive things life has to offer, and the very same week, you can experience, the absolute very worst things that life has to offer.”

He called the death of the Fort Lee High School junior a “horrible, horrible accident.”

“On behalf of the entire governing body, on behalf of the entire community, we extend our deepest, deepest of sympathies to the family,” Sokolich said. “And please take some solace in knowing that your whole community sympathizes and expresses their deepest of condolences, and also know that if there’s anything the Borough of Fort Lee can do to make this most trying time easier to get by, please do not hesitate to call upon any of us.”

Sokolich added, “As far as I’m concerned, those were the two most important events that happened in this borough this week.”

“Amazingly, those two events eclipsed even the for the West parcel of Redevelopment Area 5,” he said.