Members of the University community came together with the family of Peter D’Agostino on Friday to celebrate the life of the late second-year College student.
The event was planned by D’Agostino's close friends with the help of Second Year Class President Abraham Axler, who secured the auditorium of the Special Collections Library, because he said D'Agostino was fond of the building.
Axler provided opening remarks and those gathered also watched a slideshow with photos and videos of D'Agostino, set to a remix of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” one of D'Agostino's favorites.
Second-year College student Vijay Menon, a close friend, spoke to D'Agostino's character and role in their Association Council during their first year.
“In my life I’ve met few people more selfless and humble than Peter D’Agostino,” Menon said. “He devoted himself to the service of others, and from the beginning this was apparent in everything he did on the Association Council. … He was always the voice of reason.”
D'Agostino was also a member of The Whethermen, an improv comedy group at the University.
“We are all very close with each other and we were all very close with Peter,” Whethermen President Art Kulatti said. “Peter was really funny on stage, he was really funny off stage, and more than that he was also always trying to be really good.”
Kulatti, a fourth-year College student, also introduced and led a reading of one of D'Agostino's short stories: “How Harold Brask Got His Reputation as a Pretty Good Guy at Camp Banana.”
“We absolutely loved [the story],” Kulatti said. “It captured so many facets of Peter that we wanted to share with you guys as well.”
Kulatti said D'Agostino also took an improv class in Charlottesville and wanted to do stand-up comedy downtown.
The Academical Village People, who often perform with The Whethermen, sang “Hopeless Wanderer” and “Dancing in the Moonlight.”
Second-year Engineering student Mac Gotsch said he knew D'Agostino from his involvement with the Virginia Alpine Ski and Snowboard Team.
“With his quick-wit, killer dance moves and a beard that made other men cower in shame, he embodied all of the qualities that VASST holds dear,” Gotsch said. “[He was] a big man, not only in stature, but in personality, in ambition and in heart.”
The event concluded with the presentation of “The Whethermen Become Parents,” a video made by the group in which Peter volunteered to play a large baby.
“It’s really hard to be comforting, there’s no fairness in tragedy which is really the hardest part I think,” Axler said afterward. “It’s extraordinarily hard to understand why bad things happen to good people, and really the only thing that we can do is to continue to remember that they were wonderful, and to live lives that honor them.”
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