By Paul Leighton
BEVERLY — When a friend of Christine McDonald called yesterday to ask if she wanted to attend Army Spc. Stephen Fortunato's wake, her first instinct was to answer no. Her son, Donald Contarino of Beverly, was killed in Vietnam 39 years ago, and she hadn't been to a military wake since.
"But then I started thinking," McDonald said, "that's where I should be."
More than 1,000 others felt the same way yesterday. For five hours, that's how many people filed into the Beverly High School field house to pay their respects to the family of Fortunato, the 25-year-old infantryman who was killed Oct. 14 in Afghanistan when his military vehicle was destroyed by a bomb.
The mourners included mothers with baby carriages, elderly people in wheelchairs and teenagers not much younger than Fortunato. His flag-draped casket, guarded on either side by members of the high school's Marine Corps Junior ROTC program, lay on the floor of the school from which he graduated only six years ago.
Fortunato's family, including his mother, father, two younger brothers, grandmother and his 22-year-old widow, found the strength to stand and greet people for nearly the entire five hours. As mourners paused in front of Fortunato's casket, a few saluted, some bowed, and many walked away in tears.
Then they filed past a row of family photographs showing Stephen the toddler being tossed in the air by the grandfather for whom he was named, Stephen the teenager standing shirtless in front of his backyard pool and Stephen the soldier holding his rifle in the dust of Afghanistan.
Outside the field house, eight members of the Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcycle group that volunteers to assist at military services, stood at the doorway holding American flags. After the sun went down, members of the high school freshman football team and some of their friends held candles on the sidewalk leading to the field house.
The wake had been moved to the cavernous field house in anticipation of the large crowds, which are also expected to turn out for today's funeral at 11 a.m. at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church on Cabot Street.
The mourners included 94-year-old Sophie Villanti, who said she has known the Fortunato family all of her life. She was pushed in her wheelchair by family friend Peter Clemenzi. Villanti grew up on Creek Street in the days when the neighborhood around Rantoul Street was populated by Italian immigrants.
"My mother sent me to that boy's (Stephen Fortunato's) great-grandmother to learn how to embroider," she said. "They're a wonderful family."
Eighteen-year-old Danielle Kippenhan and her brother, 15-year-old Pat, came from Easton with two friends because Stephen Fortunato is their third cousin.
"The last time I saw him was at my high school graduation in June," Danielle said. "He was always the fun one, always smiling. He was the good goofball of the family."
Three generations of the Tanzella family attended the wake — Maureen, her daughter Hollie and Hollie's 4-month-old daughter, Juliannah. Hollie graduated with Fortunato in 2002. Maureen drove a school bus for years and remembers Stephen's smiling face in the back.
"I just can't get past the smile," she said. "And those dimples."
