'Beautiful' VT shooting victim mourned

Daniel O'Neil's life was short but filled with passions: for the Beatles, the Boston Red Sox and engineering, for his family and for the friends with whom he'd play music and Frisbee.

On Tuesday, hundreds remembered the Virginia Tech shooting victim at his funeral, and spoke about his love for science and his pursuit of a graduate degree in environmental engineering. O'Neil was among the 32 people slain by gunman Seung-Hui Cho before he committed suicide.

O'Neil, 22, was a "bundle of good habits" and a "beautiful person inside and out" who mixed intelligence and enthusiasm with modesty and seriousness, the Rev. John J. Peterson told mourners at Saint Jude's Church.

"When Danny appeared on the scene, what you saw was what you got. And what you got was something wonderful _ not now and then, but all the time," he said in his funeral homily.

Life for O'Neil, Peterson said was "more fun than trouble."

O'Neil graduated from Lincoln High School in 2002 and from Lafayette College last year. High school friend Mike Truppi recalled that O'Neil would remember tiny details about his friends and their interests and would call them to discuss a new book or movie _ or would send them a package with music he thought they would like.

"Dan was the one friend that everyone had that they just knew that they could count on," Truppi said. "When all was said and done, Dan was there for the duration of whatever it was that was going on."

"When the time comes, we'll all hang out with Dan again," Truppi said. "You know he's waiting for us up there so the good times can roll again. We love you so much, Dan _ and that will never change."

As they have done in the week since he died, close friends paid tribute to O'Neil's passion for music. O'Neil wrote and recorded songs on his acoustic guitar. His friends have said they plan to honor him with a memorial fund and CD of his music. Hundreds gathered with candles at a Rhode Island park on Saturday, where they listened to music he had recorded.

At the funeral Tuesday, friends Amanda Burbank and Rob Harkness sang an acoustic duet of "In My Life," a Beatles song that includes the refrain, "For people and things that went before/I know I'll often stop and think about them."

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On the Net:

Daniel O'Neil's MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/residenthippy