Nick Fagnano

On July 27, 1972 my aunt gave birth to a full-term still born baby boy. He was named Joseph William Boyles, named after my great grandfather.

Since then, every July 27th, my Aunt Starr mourns his death sitting quietly in mediation and prayer. I remember a few years after Joseph’s death, I saw my aunt on this particular day sitting alone in her living room in North Carolina, the room blackened by the drawn curtains. At the time, her mourning frightened me. I was only 11 or 12, at the time, and did not understand her grief or the annual day of mourning she endured that day, and still does.

This July 27th, Joseph would have been 42-years-old and he would have had, by now, a life long narrative of climbing trees as a child, skinning his knees and skirmishes with his siblings Letel, Robert and Tom. He would have played a musical instrument and experienced the joy of making the baseball team or the tearful pain of being cut from the football squad. He would have donned a black tie and pinned a corsage on a girl’s dress before prom, thrown his cap beyond retrieval on high school graduation day, became best friends with his first college roommate, explored his passions through study and found a life partner.

At middle age, he might have succeeded in his field or failed; missed by inches the opening of doors of opportunity and carried with him regrets and gratitude. He might have known the pain and pleasure of parenting, the nuanced dance of marriage and he might have loved jazz as much as Jay Z.

In 1972, my aunt was not given the chance to held her dead child. He was buried a few days later in the city cemetery in Thomasville, North Carolina, alongside relatives I’ve only heard of but did not know: Bess Harville, Fannie Pachal and my great grandfather J.W. Boyles.

My aunt’s grief has tempered, but never subsided.

This July 27th Mary Fagnano lost her only child, Nick, when lightning hit the Pacific Ocean at Venice Beach in California. An autopsy report released Wednesday, concluded Nick had died from electrocution.

Experts say there is a 1 in 7.5 million chance of being hit by lightning in California.

The community that knew Nick is grieving today. Hancock Park resident Michael Johnson, who knew Nick and his family–like many of us–through youth sports, said it best: “He was one of OUR boys. One of OUR beautiful, beautiful boys.”

We watched Nick mature from a pudgy kid that every parent loved to a 20-year-old lean and tall man who had graduated from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, but without the grades to enroll in his life long dream school, USC. That was not going to deter Nick. He worked hard at both Santa Barbara Community College and Santa Monica City College after graduating in 2012 and was enrolled to start classes at USC just a few weeks from now.

My fondest memory of Nick was watching him pitch one particular baseball game for Wilshire Sports in Hancock Park. His pudgy boyhood had turned him into a teddy bear of a teenager–in some cases twice the size of his teammates. The game was not going well and in this particular inning, he was throwing ball after ball into the dirt. Frustrated, he tried to conceal his tears, kicking dust up on the mound with one cleated foot disgusted at his lack of performance as the game unraveled and became out of hand. His father Jay was his coach and met him on the mound to help him center and help him dry his tears. Jay looked Nick in the eye and put his strong hands around Nick’s shoulders, a coach’s embrace when, as a father, he only wanted to hug him.

Nick lost that game. But went on to win many more and played at Notre Dame in Sherman Oaks and for Santa Barbara City College.

Although she saw her son play ball and witnessed him incrementally grow from a teddy bear into a man, like my Aunt, Mary’s suffering will never end.

Nick’s trajectory and the beginning of his own life narrative had started to come into focus and then it suddenly stopped without warning, without a hint, with no premonition. Mary and Jay’s suffering is only compounded by the nature in which Nick died. Dying by lightning just does not happen in Southern California.

Any words said or written about Nick may come off as cliche. But he truly was that one-of-a-kind kid admired by parents for his courtesy and respectful attitude. He was that one-of-a-kind kid that was not only Christian, but Christian cool (or in today’s parlance “kewl”). Parents in our close-knit community, bounded together by years of weekends watching baseball on lawn chairs, have described the loss of Nick as “shocking,” “devastating,” and “haunting.”

A scholarship fund for undergraduate transfer students has been established at the University of Southern California in the name of Nick Fagnano. Donations can be made to the scholarship fund in Fagnano’s name at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Today, Mary will awake and prepare herself for her son’s funeral. I have thought for the last 24 hours how to end this piece and do not know how. There simply are no words, at all, to say except we are all better for having known and loved Nick and our hearts are breaking.

I refer to Kate Bush who said my feelings best in “This Woman’s Work:”