A 1997 Seminole High graduate, John Barretto showed excellence in many areas: sports, academics, social settings.
By JADE JACKSON LLOYD
Published May 2, 2004
SEMINOLE - John Anthony Barretto could have been impossible to deal with.
Runway model looks. Athletic achievements. Classroom smarts.
But the talents he seemed born with simply endeared him to everyone who knew him, family members said. In his heart, he wanted to be normal like everyone else.
"My beautiful son had many gifts," his mother, Paulette Barretto, said Thursday. "He was prettier than most people. He was smarter than most people. He was industrious and he was just a regular guy."
"I feel like most people are just ordinary," she added. "He was just special."
Mr. Barretto died April 24 after falling from the balcony of his second-story Tallahassee apartment. He was 25 years old.
Tallahassee police say he likely was sitting on the balcony rail and slipped due to a large amount of pollen. They are investigating his death as an accident.
With final exams the previous week, Mr. Barretto had just completed his second of three years at Florida State University's College of Law. The school will be honoring him posthumously with a law degree, family members said.
He was pursuing a dream he'd set for himself as a child. A gifted orator and writer, he served as a legal writing tutor, a member of the moot court team and a writer of law review articles.
His mother said becoming a lawyer "wasn't so much a calling as he thought it was the best way to use his talents."
Circuit Court Judge Richard Luce, 58, remembers meeting Mr. Barretto as a middle-schooler. For whatever reason, the dark-haired boy stood out among the teenagers who told him of their aspirations to become lawyers or judges.
"He told me at that meeting that he wanted to be a lawyer some day," Luce said Thursday. The next time I saw him, several years later, "He came up to me and he said, "I still want to be a lawyer.' "
Luce kept track of him through his daughter, Andrea, who graduated from Seminole High School with Mr. Barretto in 1997. Through her, he knew of John's academic record and varsity involvement in soccer, baseball and football.
So Luce gave Mr. Barretto a foothold to achieve his dreams: an internship with his office. John later went on to write speeches for Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel.
"From someone saying, "I want to be a lawyer,' he was almost a lawyer," Luce said. "He won't ever realize that. That's the tragedy in it all."
Family and friends drew a vivid picture of the young man they loved.
He chewed his nails. He liked his clothes to swim on him. He loved holidays, rap music and writing poetry no one understood. He bought CDs every time he accomplished a goal. He sang karaoke and could hold conversations until 3 a.m.
The HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm made him laugh out loud. He wrote out his law school essays by hand first, because he didn't trust the computer's spell check. He connected with people upon meeting them.
He and his older brother Michael shared everything from a healthy competition to a love for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Cooking enthralled him. Crab legs and Publix subs topped his list of favorite foods.
A Florida beach baby, he wanted to see snow so badly he and his girlfriend took a road trip to Tennessee.
His favorite pastime was hanging out with those he loved.
"He had all the potential to make all this money, but he told me he would always pick the job where he could leave at 5 o'clock so he could be with his family," Natalie Williams, 23, Mr. Barretto's longtime girlfriend, said on Thursday. "He was always focused on his family."
Mark Vogt, 24, said his roommate of nine months led their circle of friends at FSU's College of Law.
"We called him the team leader because he could get everybody going," Vogt said from Tallahassee on Thursday. "If John was in, everybody was in. . . . He wasn't the soft-spoken guy you wished you would've got to know. He was the guy everybody knew."
"He was a best friend," Vogt added. "I'm sure he wasn't just mine. He was probably 10 other people's."
Rick Masi, 51, first noted Mr. Barretto's potential when he coached him in soccer at Seminole High. Masi said the 1997 team captain was the rare popular, smart jock unafraid to mix with "the ugly duckling or the nerdy kid."
"What a bright, brilliant future," Masi said Thursday. "When you see a lot of these kids getting into things they shouldn't, here you've got a kid who's done everything right his whole life. Doesn't seem right."
The last few months proved his happiest, friends say. At his big brother's Valentine's Day wedding, he delivered a best man toast that wowed the crowd. He visited his roommate's family in California. He got a few steps closer to being a lawyer.
"Every time he came home to Seminole, it was a party," his brother said Thursday. "The phones were ringing. It was an event."
Mr. Barretto's funeral has proved no different. People have called the family with condolences from as far away as Tennessee and from as far back as 10 years ago, they say. His roommate had 80 voice-mails on his cell phone from well-wishers.
The telephone and doorbell at their Seminole home rang several times during a Thursday interview.
They will remember him as much for who he was as for what his potential promised: a husband, a father and a lawyer.
"I'll miss his presence, but I'll also miss what his future could have been," his mother said, choking back the tears that have plagued her since his death. "He was just so special. That's why I can't understand how he'll be gone."
MEMORIAL
Family and friends have created the John Anthony Barretto Memorial Scholarship Fund to honor the 25-year-old's memory. To donate, visit a local Bank of America.
