Renny Smith is a beautiful child. His golden ringlets, dark eyes and vivacious demeanor elicit smiles from anyone who meets him. Just shy of two, he is a healthy, spirited toddler bubbling with energy. For his parents, Richard and Melissa Smith, his vigor is a precious gift, a testament to the dedicated staff at Children’s Hospital in Boston and the Island community that supported the Smith family through Renny’s perilous first year.

The Smiths live in Edgartown with Zachary, their kindergarten-age son, and Renny. Richard is principal at the Tisbury School and Melissa will return next fall to her position as a middle school language arts teacher at the Oak Bluffs School. The two met in Virginia when they taught in adjacent classrooms at Larkspur Middle School in Virginia Beach. They moved to the Vineyard in 2002. The next year they bought a home and welcomed Zachary into the family. For the self-described homebodies, Island life was a comfortable fit.

“We ended up loving it,” Richard says.

They discovered the close-knit nature of the Island community when the staff threw Richard a surprise baby shower before Zachary’s birth.

“You find out when you live here how tight the community is,” he says. “It’s an amazing group of people.”

In 2007 they were expecting their second child. Melissa’s pregnancy was proceeding normally until, at the 18th week, they traveled to Boston for an ultrasound.

“We had 15 minutes of uncomfortable silence,” recalls Melissa. “That’s when the doctors told us they saw a problem with the heart.”

A subsequent examination revealed transposition of the great arteries, a congenital defect in which the pulmonary and aortic arteries are connected to the wrong ventricles. A later examination by Dr. Frank Cecchin at Children’s Hospital revealed the arteries had congenitally corrected themselves, yet the Smiths’ sense of relief was short-lived as they learned the wrong sides of the heart were performing each other’s tasks, with the weaker side pumping blood to extremities and the stronger side pumping the relatively short distance to the lungs. As little as seven years ago this would have qualified Renny for a heart transplant. Recent advances allow this to be corrected surgically once an infant is old enough to withstand the procedure, normally at nine to twelve months.

Renny was born on Monday, June 11, 2007 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. It was a smooth delivery, and by Friday he and Melissa were home on the Island. The following Monday Melissa took him for a visit with pediatrician Dr. Melanie Miller. Her examination revealed an unexpected complication — Renny’s heart was beating at 280 beats per minute. The cause: supraventricular tachycardia, a disorder in which irregular nerve impulses cause the heart to beat at rapid rates.

Thus began a series of trips to and from Children’s Hospital, culminating in a two-month stay in the summer of 2007 during which Renny developed necrotizing entricolitis, a condition which required the surgical removal of part of his colon. He also underwent ablation surgery at the hands of Dr. Cecchin to correct the tachyardia and a banding procedure by Dr. Pedro del Nido to adjust the blood pressure in the ventricles.

Melissa spent the summer of 2007 with Renny in Children’s Hospital, staying at the Devin Nicole House, a community home sponsored by the hospital. Richard and Zachary made frequent visits. At the house, the Smiths met other families going through pediatric crises, some worse than theirs.

“It’s pretty eye opening there,” Richard recalls. “You almost feel fortunate for the situation your baby is going through.”

The Smiths witnessed the tremendous skill and dedication of the staff at Children’s Hospital.

“There are 10 people in this country who are very good at doing ablations for infants,” Richard says. “Fortunately, three of them work at Children’s. We were very lucky.”

The Smiths felt that Renny was in the best hands possible. They met people from South America, Europe and Israel who had brought their children to Boston to be operated on by Dr. del Nido.

“Dr. del Nido does things for heart patients that other people can’t or aren’t willing to do,” Melissa says. “He’s amazing.”

“We were just kind of falling into his lap,” Richard says. “We’re very lucky.”

Melissa and Renny returned to the Island in mid August, hoping to enjoy a relatively normal spell until the corrective surgery at nine months. The hope was short-lived; a routine cough in September led to water retention in Renny’s neck. Dr. Karen Casper at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital took an X-ray and discovered Renny’s lungs had collapsed. In quick order, Missy and Renny were on a flight to Boston in a Medevac helicopter with Richard and Zachary following by car.

Renny was entering the gravest chapter of his ordeal.

Doctors at Children’s Hospital discovered a perforation in his lung, necessitating a special respirator that sent small puffs of air into his tiny lungs. Dr. Miller traveled from the Island to Boston to support the Smiths. Richard recalls a particularly sobering assessment by her.

“She said, ‘There are a lot of sick babies in the ICU, and yours is the sickest.’ ”

Renny spent three weeks on the special ventilator. Doctors had to medically induce paralysis to keep Renny from moving during the treatment. The physicians explained that while the ventilator was keeping Renny alive, there was a limited amount of time he could remain on it without toxic complications.

The doctors were running out of options. They considered a biopsy of the lungs, yet there was a high risk of permanently puncturing the lungs. They decided to administer steroids to build up his lungs before attempting the biopsy. With the prognosis growing increasingly grim, Dr. Ronald Lacro spoke with Melissa about the difficult crossroad Renny had reached.

“Dr. Lacro, who is wonderful, who was my serenity and guide through this whole thing, said the ‘if’ word about his recovery, and it was the first time he said it,” Melissa says. “That’s when I knew things weren’t good for us, and for him.”

“She called me and said, ‘You need to hurry up and come up here,’ ” Richard recalls.

Melissa sent an e-mail to several co-workers at the Oak Bluffs School who were close friends with the family and had been active in organizing community support for the Smiths. The e-mail outlined Renny’s grim prognosis. Time was running out.

“Missy’s e-mail sent a chill through our hearts,” one co-worker recalls. The co-worker sent an e-mail to the entire school staff, asking them to pray. With conventional medicine at a dead end, it was the final resort.

That day and night, Renny wavered at the doorway between life and death. And scores of people prayed for him.

“It was a last-ditch effort for us to help save Renny’s life,” the co-worker says. “This went beyond the meals we cooked and the cards, financial support, toys, magazines and pictures we sent. The doctors thought there was no hope.”

While science may never come up with a conclusive answer for the events that evening, this much is certain: something happened.

“He turned the corner,” Richard says. “He got off the ventilator. We were on the regular ventilator for a short period of time, and then they were weaning him off the medicines. No one knows why [he began to improve].”

The co-worker remembers that the whole school celebrated. “He is a walking miracle. He will continue to be a miracle for all of us,” she says.

By Thanksgiving, Renny was out of the hospital and back on the Vineyard. In May 2008 he underwent the corrective arterial surgery at the hands of Dr. del Nido.

“Dr. del Nido told us it went about as well as you could ever want it,” Richard says. “With luck, maybe he never has to have surgery again. It felt like winning the lottery.”

The hospital expected Renny would need three weeks to recover, but eight days later, he was released. It was May 10, his father’s birthday and Mother’s Day. Since then, he’s grown into a feisty, spirited child with nonstop energy. His height and weight is in the 50th percentile and the only evidence of his ordeal is the patchwork of scars along his torso, many of which are fading to pencil-thin streaks. He is on a nine-month checkup schedule at Children’s Hospital.

Richard and Melissa say the experience changed them.

“We’re a different family,” Richard says. “We’re closer, and appreciate our closeness more.” Both describe Zachary’s tremendous patience as a three-year-old during the long hospital stays and his gentleness with his now-rambunctious younger sibling. And both still marvel at the tremendous outpouring of compassion and generosity from the Island community. Staff members from both schools cooked meals and donated envelopes full of cash and checks to help defray travel expenses. Mark Wallace offered to contribute funds from the annual Christmas tree sale at Jim’s Package Store to Renny. Joanne Lambert took extra care of Zachary at her day care when Melissa was in Boston and Richard was busy at the Tisbury School.

And about the prayers sent on Renny’s behalf in his most dangerous moments, Melissa says, “In my heart of hearts I believe that day made a difference. There are things the doctors can’t explain. They’d say it was the steroids, but I like to think it was the collective voice of Martha’s Vineyard rising up.”

And as Mother’s Day approaches, the Smith family understandably feels blessed.

“We’ve never been more content in our lives being here,” Richard says.

“This has been an amazing seven years.”