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Luke Pardini, a second-year English student, died in his sleep Wednesday.
Pardini flew home to Johnstown, Penn., on Wednesday for Thanksgiving and ate his mother's lasagna and played pool with his dad before falling asleep on a couch. When his father went to wake him up Thanksgiving morning, he was dead.
An ambulance came, but medics said there was nothing they could do, said Bill Pardini, Luke's father. The cause of death is unknown, he said. They are waiting on an autopsy.
Pardini, who lived in the Wilshire House close to campus, had a passion for music.
"His favorite thing was playing guitar," his father said.
Luke started teaching himself to play freshman year in high school and would practice three to four hours a night, he said.
Music was so important to him that when asked if he would rather be deaf or blind, he would always respond with blind, said Lucy Turek, a second-year psychology student. They met before school started freshman year and both lived in Moore their first year.
When Pardini came home, he would go to a local bar for open-mic night, his father said. Pardini liked to play music from groups such as Pearl Jam, but he also wrote his own material.
Last semester, he helped organize an open-mic night in the Towers, said Carolina Beam, a second-year business student who lived in Moore last year.
Aside from being an avid musician, Pardini liked to lighten things up.
"He never took things too seriously, and he put things in perspective," said Jenny Carraway, a first-year business administration student. "He was just so funny."
"He was the life of the party," Beam said. "He was so free-spirited."
Even though he was always laughing, he made time for friends.
"He could be very laid back and fun, but when you had a serious problem, he would really listen and give great advice," Beam said.
"He was the kind of guy you could talk to about anything," said Turek, who grew to be best friends with Pardini. "I've had a lot of bad things happen to me this year, and he was always there for me."
The funeral was Monday morning at Saint Anthony of Padua in Windber, Penn. Several of his friends flew to be there.
"It was really, really sad and hard for all of us," Carraway said.
Pardini's close friends are sticking together to help each other get through this, Carraway said.
"He made a major impact on all our lives," Beam said. "There's always going to be a hole in our group."
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