Benoit said she found a note last week Fonseca sent with a rose he gave her as a first-year. “He wrote, ‘Dear Kristy: Stay clean and Catholic,’” she said.

Those who remembered he best also emphasized Fonseca’s love for all kinds of music—from rap to classical. Fonseca, a well-known campus deejay, often volunteered his skills for both charity events and friends’ parties.

Rojas recalled how Fonseca would deejay music at the frequent parties held in Winthrop H- and I-entryways—usually wearing a white Stetson cowboy hat.

“He may have been the life of a scene, but he never made anyone feel left out,” Rojas added.

William L. Aronson ’04, Fonseca’s next-door neighbor in Winthrop J-entryway, introduced a performance of one of Fonseca’s favorite musical pieces, the “Prelude in C-minor” from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Fonseca often requested that Aronson play Bach’s piece for him.

“I could never do it justice,” Aronson said. “But he never cared.”

Fonseca also asked to hear other pieces, said Aronson.

“Sometimes he’d come into my room and make me play ‘flashy’ stuff on my keyboard,” Aronson said. “I’d suggest playing something introspective, and he’d say, ‘It’s not flashy enough!’”

Chacón, Fonseca’s uncle, commented on some of Fonseca’s other hobbies. He said that Fonseca loved to read history, especially biographies.

“Reading about others would help him catch up with the past and it would propel him into the future,” Chacón said.

“He knew Christina Aguilera’s life,” said Chacón to laughter, “just as he knew Nelson Mandela’s life, Mikhail Gorbachev’s life, Bill Clinton’s life. He grew up knowing it all, which he was sure to tell you.”

And Chacón said Fonseca lived his own life to the fullest.

“He lived the moments as they came. He observed, he questioned everything that happened in that instant,” he said.

Chacón thanked members of Harvard’s administration and the masters and tutors of Winthrop for helping the family through its grieving.

Holding back tears and with his voice breaking, Winthrop Master Stephen P. Rosen told students at the service to “not despair.”