Hero Among Us

8-year-old Beckett needed a new liver. His donor lived next door.

It’s been a great year to be a Celtics fan. It got even better for Beverly residents when the team’s latest Hero Among Us turned out to be, well, among us.

Amanda Neal of Beverly received the honor at halftime of a game on March 18 at TD Garden. The Celtics started the Heroes Among Us program in 1997 to celebrate people who have made “an overwhelming impact on the lives of others.” It’s hard to imagine anybody fitting that description better than Amanda Neal. You can’t have more of an impact than saving someone’s life, and that’s just what Amanda did.

Amanda lives on Eastern Avenue in Ryal Side. In March of 2025, she got a group message from a neighbor saying that another neighbor, 8-year-old Beckett Connolly, needed a liver transplant and they were looking for a live donor.

Ryal Side is a friendly place and Amanda knew the Connollys. As we sat and talked in her dining room the other day, she looked out her window and pointed out the Connollys’ house across the street. Their kids go to the same school, Ayers Ryal Side, and Amanda and Beckett’s mom, Lisa, played together on Ayers’ Momball softball team. But it wasn’t like they were best friends. Amanda said didn’t know Beckett had liver cancer until two months after he was diagnosed. Nevertheless, when she saw the email, which included a form to start the process of becoming a donor, she signed right up.

Amanda describes that first step — the first step to saving the life of a boy she hardly knew — as matter-of-factly as someone renewing their car registration.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I filled out the form and went and got blood work done.”

But you must have given it a lot of thought, right?, I asked her.

“I didn’t. I didn’t,” she said. “Honestly I was like, I’ll go see. I’ve always been a blood donor. I filled out an application two years ago to donate to someone’s cousin — I believe it was liver or kidney. I was just like, let’s see what happens.”

Amanda, who is 40, described a rigorous vetting process at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington to see if she was a match for Beckett. Was she the right blood type? Yes, A-positive. X-rays, CT scan, MRI, EKG. All good. Eighteen vials of blood for more tests. She met with a nurse, a psychologist, a financial advisor (to see if she could afford the time off from work. Amanda is an accountant). Then they had to make sure the anatomy of her liver matched up with Beckett’s so they could be fused together.

Amanda got a standing ovation at halftime of the Celtics’ game on March 18 at TD Garden.

About a month after she signed that form, Amanda got the word: She was a match.

All of this, mind you, was going on without the Connollys knowing that their neighbor was one of the prospective donors. Amanda said she didn’t want them to worry about her and the impact that her surgery would have on her family.

“I felt like if they didn’t know who I was it would make it easier,” she said. “Not for me. For them.”

At about that time in our interview, John Connolly arrived. John is a native of Ireland who works as the director of marketing for the Harvard Art Museums. He showed up still sore from a 22-mile run the day before, in preparation for running the Boston Marathon this month (more on that later).

John took me through the story of how the family discovered Beckett’s liver cancer and the ordeal that followed. It started out with high temperatures. Beckett got checked for Lyme disease, but that wasn’t it. When the high temps continued, Lisa took him in for X-rays, which showed a mass on his liver.

The family ended up at Boston Children’s Hospital where Beckett underwent an MRI around midnight. As the family waited, including Lisa and Beckett’s twin sister, Ailish, John fell asleep in the dark waiting room while listening to a podcast about Gaelic football. When he woke up, the podcasters were interviewing a football player who had terminal liver cancer.

“I just turned it off,” John said.

The next day, doctors delivered the news — “It looks like cancer.”

“It hadn’t dawned on me until we were sitting down that they could actually have real bad news,” John said. “They could say, ‘This is over.’ That hit me about a minute before they started talking and I started to shake. Thankfully, they said there was a path forward.”

John Connolly with Ailish and Beckett.

That path, however, was not a straight one. Doctors initially hoped they could remove the tumor, but during surgery determined the tumor was too big. The only solution was a transplant. In the meantime, Beckett underwent more rounds of chemotherapy at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund Clinic to shrink the size of the tumor. He lost his hair. He went to a school dance at Ayers with an IV bag on his back.

“The chemo part was hard because when we were in Children’s we were in our own little ward,” John said. “But when we went into the Jimmy Fund the kids were in these big armchairs where they get their chemo fed through an IV. You’re just absolutely dying inside. You hear the pain they’re going through. That was your world.”

The family celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve in the hospital. John said Beckett’s sister Ailish was strong throughout. He described his wife Lisa as the “main driving force behind everything.” The Ryal Side community responded with meals and donations and visits. And he said the doctors, nurses and staff at Dana Farber were literally life-savers.

“It was terrible stuff but the humanity of the people was just outstanding,” John said. “People just doing incredible things. That blew my mind. It gave me a lot of optimism.”

A liver from a deceased person became available, but Beckett was not yet strong enough for the surgery. Later, when Beckett was stronger, the Connollys got the word that there was an approved donor — a living donor.

“It was overwhelming,” John said. “Your mind is gone. It’s like waves coming at you. I couldn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t believe that someone would do this.”

The transplant took place on April 9, 2025. At Lahey in Burlington, Amanda had 40% of her liver removed during a six-hour surgery. It was taken by ambulance in a refrigerated container to Boston. Later that day, during another six hours of surgery, doctors removed the damaged part of Beckett’s liver and replaced it with Amanda’s, literally stitching the two together.

The next day, Ailish came home from school and said she heard kids talking about Beckett’s donor. It was Amanda Neal, the mom across the street.

“I was floored,” John said about the discovery. “I had known her in passing. Very pleasant person, good family person, always with her kids, her dogs, walking to school. I took a step back and said, ‘It’s someone on our street.’”

Nearly a year later, Beckett and Amanda are both doing well. Beckett, who will turn 10 this month, is playing soccer and riding his bike with friends. Amanda, like John, is planning to run the Boston Marathon on April 20 and raise money, Amanda for the Beth Israel Lahey Hospital team and John for the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team. You can donate at those links.

Amanda said she wants to highlight the “phenomenal work” of the Beth Israel Lahey Health Burlington transplant team and raise awareness about live liver donation. She said she wants to show people that you can be a living donor and get right back to a fully healthy life.

“I’m just as strong, just as active as I was before,” she said.

John said one of the hardest parts of the whole ordeal was figuring out a way to express the family’s gratitude to Amanda. A thank-you note hardly seemed sufficient. He wouldn’t quite know what to say in person. He told Beckett he’d have to shovel Amanda’s driveway for the rest of his life.

A month after the transplant, he was walking home from the train and Amanda was walking to Innocenti Park for a softball game. They crossed paths near the Hall-Whitaker Bridge. John gave Amanda a hug.

On July 4th, Amanda and Beckett served as the grand marshals of the annual Ryal Side parade. It was the first time they had met since the transplant. As they rode side by side through the streets of Ryal Side, waving to their cheering neighbors, they talked about Beckett’s recent family fishing trip.

They didn’t talk about the transplant. After all they’d been through, there was no need for words.

Amanda and Beckett at last year’s Ryal Side Fourth of July Parade.