We learned of the deaths of five classmates in 2017 and 2018.

• John Cardano
• William Lyons
• Francis Maroney
• James Turgeon
• Teresa Welz Reed

Their names have been added to the list on our “In memoriam” page, where you can also find obituaries for them.

Please let me know by email if you know of any others. As we say on the “In memoriam” page, the deaths of classmates and friends are a regrettable but inevitable feature of our lives now.

Joe DeCaro Fitzgerald gave the following eulogy for John Cardano at a memorial service on June 27, 2018:

“John and I first met through an odd circumstance: I had gotten into a fight at our parochial high school and, given the option of suspension or the wrestling team, I chose the latter.

“John was the winning ‘ying’ to my losing ‘yang,’ As I could never gather enough dislike for any opponent to confidently fight on a wrestling mat!

“Outside of school, a small cadre of friends developed, of multi-cultured backgrounds: Mike Arpaio, Attilio Cardaropoli, Don Ferrarone, Rich Romboletti, and Joe DeCaro (Fitzgerald), comprised the Italians; Frank Czernowski, the Polish; Dick Guilmette, the French; Dan Cotter and Bill Christie, the Scotch-Irish.

“We came from neighborhoods with ‘exotic’ nom de guerres — ‘Hungry Hill,’ ‘Six Corners,’ ‘South End,’ the ‘X,’ and bucolic ‘Forest Park.’

“Being a time of concupiscence, they explored their awakenings at the Cardano cottage on Lake Thompson.

“I say ‘they,’ since I was relegated to replacing the needle on the 78-vinyl Johnny Mathis album while who-knew-what went on in other rooms of the cottage!

“I lost track of folks after high school, catching up briefly, at John and Gloria‘s wedding.

“I headed to the Marines, returning from Vietnam prior to John’s deployment to the war zone, where, serving as an Army translator to a Marine unit near the DMZ, he was severely wounded during a mortar attack and awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his service.

“I was the Marine, but John was the greater warrior.

“John’s struggles with his injuries lead him on a remarkable journey of healing.  In The Fabric of Health, he wrote, ‘The potential to die in health and peace demonstrates our capacity to alter our quality of life.’

“John’s survival through fourth-stage cancer, eight years ago, was fueled by a determination to see his daughters and granddaughter grow to be the extraordinary caring and loving souls they’ve become.

“John had a gift for healing mind, body, and spirit. His advice could be as hard putty, applied to sustain a crumbling wall; carefully applied, but with enough tensile strength to hold one’s spirit together in the immediate moment.

“John’s focus on health relied on the act of conscious breathing. John, our friend, once inhaling the breath of bitterness and rage from a conflict we came to abhor, filtered that air and exhaled peace, love, health, and happiness to his family, friends, and clients.

“John was a considerable man, and we miss him.”