Apr 17, 2007 10:21 pm US/Eastern
R.I. Graduate Student One Of Virginia Tech Victims
LINCOLN, R.I. (AP) ―
Daniel O'Neil taught himself how to play guitar in high school and with just a little coaching was soon able to teach classmates how to play, too.
Those who knew O'Neil, who was among the people killed during a bloody rampage at Virginia Tech, said that was typical. He was a jack-of-all-trades who succeeded in nearly everything he tried: science, engineering, cross-country running, drama, and music.
"He kind of had it all going for him," said Dave Enos, a high school music teacher who directed the jazz ensemble at Lincoln High School, where O'Neil graduated in 2002. O'Neil taught guitar and was an assistant in one of Enos' classes, he said.
O'Neil, 22, graduated in the top 10 percent of his class of more than 220, said Kevin McNamara, assistant principal at Lincoln High. He went on to major in civil engineering at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., where he graduated last year, then onto graduate school in environmental engineering at Virginia Tech.
A phone message left with O'Neil's father, Bill, was not immediately returned. The O'Neil family home, in a quiet subdivision tucked beside a state park in Lincoln, appeared vacant and the neighborhood was quiet Tuesday afternoon.
High school friend Steve Craveiro said he heard from a close mutual friend Monday that O'Neil was in Virginia Tech's engineering building and was among the 32 students and professors killed before a senior, Cho Seung-Hui, turned the gun on himself.
"I got a message on my phone at about 4 a.m. this morning saying that he didn't make it," Craveiro said in a telephone interview.
O'Neil played guitar and wrote his own songs, which he posted on a Web site,
www.residenthippy.com. Craveiro said O'Neil was a fan of the Beatles, but the music he wrote was in the folk and acoustic vein.
"He would never talk himself up as a musician," Craveiro said. "He had a personal relationship with his music."
Craveiro described O'Neil as smart, responsible and a hard worker -- someone who never got into trouble.
"He would come home from school over the summer and talk about projects, about building bridges and stuff like that," Craveiro said. "He loved his family. He was pretty much destined to be extremely successful. He just didn't deserve to have happen what happened."
Katlyn Duquenoy, 22, lives across the street from the O'Neil family and said she has known them since she was in fourth grade. Duquenoy, who graduated in the same high school class as O'Neil, described him as extremely intelligent.
"He probably would have gone really far in life and been successful," she said.
McNamara said O'Neil took challenging classes, participated in several extracurricular activities and moved easily between social circles.
"He had many different friends from different types of groups," he said.
Gov. Don Carcieri said he was saddened by O'Neil's death and ordered state flags lowered to honor the shooting victims. Lincoln Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond issued a written statement offering condolences and support to O'Neil's family, friends and classmates.
O'Neil left two entries in his senior yearbook "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" and "Life ain't a track meet, it's a marathon."
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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