Quilt commemorates teen's life
By Nick Pinto/ Staff Writer
Thursday, October 13, 2005

ACTON - How do you commemorate a life cut short?

     For the friends and parents of Danny McCarthy, a 16-year-old Acton resident who was killed in a car accident in 2003, one answer is to found a youth center to benefit local children and teenagers in Danny's name.

     But Acton quilt-maker Laurie Laconte has helped Danny's loved ones to create another, more intimate memorial as well. Working with Danny's mother, Cindy McCarthy, as well his former classmates at the high school, Laconte has created a quilt that vividly communicates the vibrancy of its subject.

     "It was strange," Lanconte said of her process creating the quilt. "I'm one of the only people who got to know Danny after he died."

     Sorting through 16 years of belongings, artwork, and photographs, Laconte and McCarthy culled the images that most evoked who Danny was.

     Looking at the quilt with Laconte and McCarthy, it's easy to see how the quilt-maker feels she got to know her subject. There is a story behind each panel.

     From the crucifix and chain his parents bought him in Rome to his lacrosse jersey, the quilt covers the length and breadth of Danny's interests. His favorite video game is represented, as is the Subaru WRX he hoped to buy. Jimi Hendrix is there, alongside Donald Duck. One panel depicts the khaki pants that Danny always wore.

     Perhaps what is most striking about the quilt is how ordinary the life it documents appears to be.

     "He was a kid like every other kid," his mother said. "He wasn't a sports star or anything like that. He liked to live under the radar. He just wanted to blend in and involve everybody else in whatever they were doing."

     Laconte said that it was Danny's "everykid" quality that first drew her into working on the quilt.

     "I have three teenagers myself," Lanconte said. "I remember hearing about this story and thinking 'This is something that any parent would be blown away by.' I wanted to help."

     But if the quilt shows the ordinary, regular childhood that Danny lived, it also shows the way in which he was unique and precious to those who knew him.

"He was a Peter-Pan kind of a kid," McCarthy said, gazing at the quilt. "He still played with Legos and army men."

     Running along the border of the quilt are hundreds of gold and blue swatches signed by Danny's classmates the night they graduated without him in 2004. Some bear only a signature. Others proclaim their love promise always to remember. On the panel signed by the boy who drove the car in which Danny died, two words: "I'm sorry."

     One corner of the quilt reproduces a poem Danny wrote for class before he died. "Every generation becomes part of the past," it reads. "Life really passed by fast."

     Danny's parents and friends say the quilt will be hung near the entrance to Danny's Place once the youth center is up and running. Already the group has secured a space in the Merriam School building to house their youth center. They are in the process of hiring a youth services director, have raised a third of the $1 million needed to fund the center for five years, and are accepting applications for the first round of youth-service grants they will make this year.

     But as great and lasting a testament as Danny's Place will be for its namesake, it is the quilt that will help to make it personal, said Nancy Hodgman, who sits on the steering committee for Danny's Place

     "Years from now, kids who didn't even know him and who have no idea who the Danny in 'Danny's Place' is will look at this and see that he was a real kid, a lot like them," Hodgman said. "It's literally like a living legacy."

     Laconte's quilt will be shown one last time before it is permanently installed at Danny's Place later this year. The showing will be at St. Matthews church on Oct. 21 and 22