PORT MORRIS — When Howard Romanoff was diagnosed with a potentially fatal lung disease in 2007, he knew that his best hope for survival was receiving a double lung transplant.
It took a long and anxiety-wracked four years.
"You’re not really sure what you’re waiting for," said Romanoff, who had been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. "Waiting is very frustrating. Waiting is very anxiety driven. Waiting sucks."
Romanoff is good friends with the Zaros, who run the city's famed Zaro's Family Bakery, and his experience trying to get new lungs inspired them to put up a huge mural devoted to organ donors at their South Bronx headquarters.
The mural adorns the bakery's facility at 138 Bruckner Blvd. and includes the simple message "Organ Donation is Beautiful," which doubles as the project's title.
It stands 140 feet wide and 30 feet tall and is located in a heavily trafficked section of The Bronx, so Romanoff hopes that people going by it will be inspired to become organ donors themselves.
"The biggest problem is that organ donation is not on people's radar until they’re personally touched by it, either knowing somebody like myself who has gone through it or a friend or a family member," he said. "Hopefully, when people pass by this mural, it will create awareness."
Billy the Artist, who is based in the East Village, created the mural and has previously done projects for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum, MTV and Danica Patrick.
He hopes his latest project will not only encourage people to become organ donors but also encourage them to think about the broader importance of generosity.
"I wanted to give off not only the awareness of organ donation but giving, sharing, love, family and joy," he said. "And so there are all sorts of different images that are like a puzzle-like piece together of all of those different parts that I described."
There are more than 120,000 people in the United States in need of organ transplants, and more than 10,000 of them live in the greater New York metro area, according to LiveOnNY, an organ procurement group that partnered with Zaro's to put the mural together.
New Yorkers can become donors at the State Department of Motor Vehicles when applying for or renewing their driver's license, or they can fill out the Donor Registry enrollment form online and mail it to the State Health Department.
The state currently ranks last in the country for percentage of residents registered as organ donors at 25 percent, far below the national average of 50 percent, according to LiveOnNY.
Stuart Zaro, owner of Zaro's, said that his family did not realize how serious of an issue organ donations were until their friend Romanoff was in need of a lung transplant.
"They say that you only really learn things and start focusing on them when it comes close to home," he said, "and this did."
He also described the mural as a way for his family to give back to the South Bronx, where they have been since 1965.
"The Bronx has been very good to us," he said, "and so this is our way of giving back a little bit and to beautifying the South Bronx."
