Mooney spoke by telephone from his room at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Saturday night, four days after he received Glover's liver in a 12-hour transplant operation.
Glover, who also wrestled for Bergenfield High School, died last Monday at a hospital in Pennsylvania, where he had been since the Jan. 21 accident. Earlier Saturday, he was eulogized as a compassionate and giving young man and a "Bergenfield hometown hero."
Mooney, a longtime Little League official in Bergenfield and junior-varsity baseball coach at Bergen Catholic High School, coached Glover in Little League more than a decade ago. Mooney also volunteered with Bergenfield High's wrestling program when Glover was setting records as the school's first wrestler to break the mark for 100 career wins.
Now, coach and athlete are linked in the most personal and profound of ways.
"This makes me want to live for more than one person - for me and for Danny, and all the people who can see that miracles can happen," Mooney said.
It was indeed a miracle. The odds of the organ being a match were minuscule.
Mooney was diagnosed with cirrhosis five years ago and was placed on the waiting list for a liver in the summer. He said he was far down the list and was told that without a transplant, "I would get sicker as my life progressed."
Glover's parents, Raymond and Karyn, met last Sunday with representatives of the Gift of Life Donor Program. They knew then that their son's death was imminent.
Dan Glover, a regular blood donor, had checked off the organ-donor box on his driver's license. His parents mentioned they knew someone in their town, Mooney, who was ailing and needed a liver.
"We were told not to get our hopes up because the likelihood of compatibility was so slim," Karyn Glover said Friday. "But the stars aligned."
All states allow a person or family to direct an organ to a specific person needing one.
