John P. Gagliardi Jr. of Medford; at 42
The engagement ring had long been picked out, and he had planned to pop the question to his girlfriend yesterday.
Instead, John P. Gagliardi Jr. became a very public reminder of the toll that a battle against drug addiction can take, his image was splashed across the front of Friday's Boston Herald after taking a lethal injection of heroin in the Boston Public Garden.
His sister, Joan Limone of Medford, said the picture answered a question for relatives, who had wondered where he was after he did not show up for his fiancee's birthday celebration on Thursday.
''I said, 'Dad, I just got the paper, and we found Johnny," she said yesterday. ''We were shaking -- I couldn't comprehend it."
Mr. Gagliardi, a former construction worker and boxing manager, was pronounced dead of a drug overdose on Thursday at New England Medical Center. The lifelong Medford resident was 42.
Mr. Gagliardi had lived a troubled existence ever since his mother's death during open-heart surgery in 1973. He had long struggled with an addiction to heroin, the drug that six years ago killed his younger brother, Joseph, relatives said.
''He just was a victim of an awful disease -- a scourge in this country today," said his father, John.
Since his teen years, Mr. Gagliardi had worked with his father, first as an assistant when his father managed boxers as president of
At age 17, he began helping his father organize matches, making sure that boxers knew where and when to show up, and seeing to it that hotel arrangements were set before the fighters arrived in town.
In the hours before the matches, he would put up signs on the boxers' changing rooms and help with ticket sales. Mr. Gagliardi eventually became manager for several boxers, relatives said. In boxing circles, he was ''very, very well liked because he was such a gentleman," his father said.
Mr. Gagliardi and his father left boxing in 1994, starting up a construction business that handled mostly residential projects -- building duplexes and constructing additions on homes. Together, they kept projects afloat at the Main Street office of G & G Construction and Madison Development in Medford. They also waterproofed basements.
Around the Medford neighborhood he grew up and lived in, he was known for being among the first to send flowers to the sick or grieving; and even when finances were tight, he managed to find the perfect gift for a friend or relative, relatives said. ''He was just the most thoughtful person," Limone said.
And he was always fastidious about his looks. ''He always had the best of everything, from the gel in his hair to the white sneakers on his feet," Limone said.
''He never looked like you would expect to see somebody on drugs look like," Limone said.
Family members saw his recent gain in weight as a sign that he was trying to control his addiction and said he was looking forward to getting married and becoming a father. His fiancee, Kimberly Anderson, is due to give birth in December. He had planned to propose yesterday on her birthday.
He often urged teenagers to avoid drugs. ''He did always talk to kids younger than him and say 'You don't want to . . . ruin your life,' " she said.
Family members said they are clinging to the image of the man they describe as a perfectionist, who smelled of Tide, was ''compulsively clean," and often helped elderly neighbors with their groceries and with odd jobs.
In addition to his father, sister, and fiancee, Mr. Gagliardi leaves his stepmother, Brenda (Jakola); two brothers, Gennaro of Medford and James Richardson of Seattle; and two other sisters, Brenda G. and Daniella, both of Medford.
A funeral Mass will be said tomorrow at 11 a.m. in St. Clement Church in Medford. Burial will be in Oak Grove Cemetery in Medford.
