AAA o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-12-29 published
'Kind family' mourned at service
Mom, two kids and niece killed
Driving back from son's hockey game
By Peter EDWARDS,
Staff
Reporter
Hamilton -- Mourners filled the 800 seats in Saint Margaret Mary
Church on Hamilton Mountain almost an hour before yesterday's
funeral began for four family members killed in an accident on
their way home from a hockey game.
There were an estimated 1,450 mourners by the time the service
began for Vivian
PORTO, 43; two of her children, Francesco, 13,
and Azzadine, 10; and her niece, Emily
PORTO, 10.
Some of the people who couldn't find a seat lined the walls of
the Roman Catholic church for the two-hour service. Others listened
through speakers in an adjoining church meeting room. A few who
couldn't find room in the church stood outside in the rain.
Inside, members of the Hamilton Junior Bulldogs team stood as
an honour guard, wearing white hockey jerseys with Francesco's
Number 11 stitched on the left shoulder.
"This is a tragedy," Bishop Gerard
BOURGIE told the congregation.
"We cannot make sense of it. All we can do is trust in God and
support one another."
Father William
TRUSCZ noted that hundreds of Friends of the family
have visited the
PORTOs since the two-car accident last Thursday
night on Highway 6, north of Highway 5, as the
PORTOs returned
from Francesco's
AAA game in Guelph.
Police blamed bad weather for the accident. Some area residents
have urged snow barriers be erected along a 24-kilometre stretch
of Highway 6 between Highways 401 and 403 that has claimed at
least 20 lives in the past 15 years.
"Your kind presence is a silent testimony that this kind family
is being held in the community's embrace,"
TRUSCZ said, asking
mourners to remember to continue to show their love for surviving
PORTO family members.
Emily PORTO's aunt, Lisa
ULRICH, recalled in a eulogy the 10-year-old's
gentle, one-dimpled smile. "Her inclination was to heal hurt,
never to inflict it,"
ULRICH said.
Family friend Joe
MANCINELLI told the congregation he considered
Vivian PORTO to be a "supermom" who worked at a family store
in the daytime and spent her evenings helping her children with
schoolwork or taking them to soccer or hockey games or family
functions.
"She loved family and loved everything that family stood for,"
MANCINELLI said. "... She was devoted to her children's activities.
Never missed a game and loved every minute of it."
MANCINELLI recalled Francesco as an honours student with a special
ability in math, and a love of soccer as well as hockey. Azzadine
had an uncanny resemblance to her mother, both physically and
in spirit,
MANCINELLI said. "She was a determined young lady,
with bright eyes and an angelic smile,"
MANCINELLI told the congregation.
Vivian PORTO and her high-school sweetheart, Sam
PORTO, also
had two older teenaged boys, both also members of the Junior
Bulldogs organization. Sam
PORTO is a manager with the Bulldogs.
Emily PORTO had a 3-year-old brother, Gabriel.
MANCINELLI, who knew Vivian
PORTO for more than three decades,
told the church service he was sure she could appreciate the
outpouring of support. However, he said she would urge her Friends
and family to go on enjoying life.
"I think that she would say, 'That's enough (grieving) now. We're
all in heaven.'"
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