R.I. native had 'lots to give the world'
LINCOLN, R.I. -- Strolling in bare feet with a guitar slung over his shoulders, Daniel Patrick O'Neil liked to serenade friends at college with a brand of music one called "subversive folk music."
"He wrote songs, and typically folky stuff but a little wacky," said Allison Quensen Blatt, adviser to the Arts Society at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. "He was a free spirit."
He was also smart and serious when it came to studying ways to protect the environment, friends said yesterday.
A native of Lincoln, R.I., and 2006 Lafayette graduate, O'Neil, 22, was killed Monday in the massacre at Virginia Tech, where he was in his first year pursuing a graduate degree in environmental engineering. The death of O'Neil, a 2002 Lincoln Senior High School graduate who loved to sing, cook, and study nature, left people on three campuses stunned and in mourning yesterday.
"He really had a lot of ability to be really successful, and I think he would have been. It's just tragic that he's gone so young," said Katlyn Duquenoy, a neighbor who was one of O'Neil's high school classmates. "You never expect that to happen to someone you know, especially in a town like Lincoln."
At Lafayette College, O'Neil had a way of floating around campus -- into friends' homes and professors' offices -- to chat or play music, Blatt said. Last fall, he called Blatt to ask if he could play in the Block pARTy, a campus street festival, and the next day he was there, strumming away as though he were still in school there.
"Nobody batted an eyelash," Blatt said. "It was like, 'Oh, there's Dan with his guitar.'"
At Lincoln High, O'Neil was a whirlwind: a member of the track team, math team, and National Honor Society, and a guitar player in the jazz band and student variety show. He was also active in Renaissance, a club that tries to make the school more welcoming by sponsoring dances, breakfasts, and community service projects. The quotes in his yearbook entry read, "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die," and "Life ain't a track meet, it's a marathon."
"He always had a smile on his face -- a very positive, nice kid who had many, many friends," said Kevin McNamara, the assistant principal at Lincoln High.
"He was a student with lots to give the world."
A longtime neighbor in Lincoln, Clifford Mazer, recalled that the most trouble O'Neil ever caused was playing his drums too loudly.
"We're just devastated by the news," Mazer said. "He was a wonderful child."
As a member of the Marquis Players, the student-acting troupe at Lafayette, O'Neil worked as an usher and in the box office, helped build sets, and donned tights to play the role of Prince Dauntless in the musical "Once Upon a Mattress," Blatt said.
If art was a constant in O'Neil's life, so was science. At Lafayette, he won a scholarship to help his professor, David Brandes, research the effects of urban
development on local watersheds. They focused on the damage that Hurricane Ivan had caused to local waterways in 2004. A photo on a college website showed O'Neil studying flood damage, dressed in hip waders in the sun-dappled Bushkill Creek.
Even when he wasn't in the field, O'Neil thought about the environment, Blatt said.
"He used to come in and tell me how badly designed the college quad was, because it couldn' handle runoff, and how he could fix it if he had the time and money."
Yesterday, as word spread about O'Neil's death, his father, Daniel, traveled to Virginia, Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri ordered flags to half staff, and students at Lafayette mourned in the campus chapel.
"The students I've talked to today are really at sea," Blatt said. 