Shortly before their 40th reunion last October, the Class of ’83 lost one of their most beloved members. Dr. James “Cicci” Ciccarelli died in August, in Waterbury, CT, where he had practiced optometry for 25 years.
“One thing that was repeatedly said at his funeral was that Cicci was everybody's best friend,” said Caroline Cantwell Emmerson, an ’83 classmate and close friend of Ciccarelli’s. “I would say he was the most popular guy in our class. He was friends with all different types of people in college. The football team, the architects, the engineers. He kind of unified everybody.”
Caroline and her ’83 classmates James Ryan and Dorothy Duffy wanted to honor their friend in a way that would carry on his spirit at CUA. “He was a psychology major,” Emmerson said. “When we were in college, he was working on the suicide hotline. I think he made a difference when he did that. He really wanted to help people.”
Emmerson came up with the idea of a fund to support suicide prevention efforts. “I thought, let's try and tie it back to Catholic, to Cicci’s degree in psychology and to what a caring individual he was.”
She approached Department of Psychology Chair Dr. Brendan Rich about the idea. “One of the strengths of the department is the work we do in suicide prevention,” Rich said. “Caroline told me Dr. Ciccarelli had done work related to suicide prevention. He also had done a lot of work with students in the community, particularly those from economically marginalized backgrounds. Was there a way to have this funding honor those interests? I said, ‘Absolutely.’”
The October 13 class reunion would be the perfect occasion to launch the fund. Ryan had been a bartender at the Dubliner when he was at Catholic, so, he called the Dubliner and reserved space for a Class of ’83 party. Invitations to reserve a spot went out. The fee would cover food, drink, and donations to the Ciccarelli memorial project.
“It exceeded our expectations,” Caroline said. “There were people from all over. It ended up being just like college, a huge party.” After the event, more people got in touch to ask how they could contribute to the memorial fund. Total donations ended up being almost five times what the planners had predicted.
Starting this fall, contributions in memory of James Ciccarelli from the Class of 1983 will help support Psychology undergraduate student research in suicide prevention, in particular for people from economically marginalized communities.