In Loving Memory of Richard M. Caproni
February 9, 1967 - September 11, 2001OUR SUN
One question.
One word.
Why?
No answer. No Meaning.
Why?
He was Our Sun,
Our light.
He was laughter
and life itself.
The light is gone
and the laughter is only an echo.
The darkness is so deep
and the strength we need to reach beyond it
bleeds with each passing hour.
But we WILL reach beyond.
We must.
It will be a legacy
To the power of Our Sun.
And his light will shine.
And his laughter will always echo.
And where no meaning existed
meaning will be found,
and a purpose,
and a reason to go on living,
never the same,
yet somehow more determined
to shine the light of Our Sun
toward a better place and time.
Beyond this moment, lost in time,
we will believe once more.
but, until that time,
we mourn and ask
Why?
- Tim Whalen
Big guy with a big laughThree times a week, after Rich Caproni finished work, he went to the movies. It didn’t matter what kind – a subtitled foreign flick, a dumb comedy, a thriller. Caproni, 34, saw them all. If his friends needed to know who won the Oscar for best actor in 1943, or if they wanted an instant review of a new film, they’d call him. It was a habit he acquired growing up in North Babylon, Long Island, where his father frequently took him and his three younger siblings to movies. “He was a big guy with a big laugh,” remembers his dad, Richard, “and if something struck him as funny, he’d laugh so hard that all of a sudden the whole theater would catch on and start laughing, too.”
After graduating from SUNY Oswego, Caproni moved to Manhattan and rose to his position as senior account specialist for Marsh & McLennan, stationed on the ninety-eighth floor of the World Trade Center’s Tower One. In August, he bought his first apartment, a condo in Lynbrook, Long Island, and moved there with his Blockbuster-size collection of videos. His sister Lisa had just begun helping him decorate. He was looking forward to going to an Ohio State football game with his college friends in October, and to next summer, when he’d be close to the beach, the place he loved best. “He’d get there at nine in the morning and wouldn’t leave til the sun went down,” says a former girlfriend, Amy Ma.
At six feet two and 265 pounds, Caproni made an impression on those he met, and he kept his friends for life. When Ma threw a surprise thirtieth birthday party for him, so many people came that they spilled out of the room she had reserved and took over the entire bar. One of the few things in life Caproni didn’t like was cleaning. But after he moved into his new apartment, his mother sent a dust mop to inspire him. On Sunday, September 9th, Caproni called her for the last time. “Hey, Mom,” he said, “I want you to know I just cleaned the place. It’s sparkling.”
From Rolling Stone, December 27, 2001 – January 3, 2002
© Rolling Stone LLC 2002
All Rights Reserved. Broadcast by Permission
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