The family of Niccolai Schuster has paid tribute to the 21-year-old student who died in the Berkeley balcony tragedy.
His father John said Niccolai was the “love of our lives”. He had a magical smile, a sense of the ridiculous, he was “sports mad” and proud of his little brother. “Oh my God, he was so special.”
His mother Graziella told mourners at her son’s funeral mass that he brought “nothing but joy to us”. She praised his sense of justice and his love of practical jokes. She told the congregation how he used to play Fifa on the Playstation in her office and the pair of them would chat away. He will be “forever in my heart”, she said.
Nicc’s brother Alexei fought back tears and said “words cannot describe the pain I’m feeling. I’m split in two.” He also spoke of his great pride in his brother, his best friend “the king of tomfoolery”.
The young men who shouldered Nicc’s coffin into the Church of the Three Patrons in Rathgar wore the red jerseys of his beloved Bayern Munich with the name Schuster printed on the back. Other mourners wore the blue and white of his secondary school, St Mary’s College, Rathmines.
Hundreds attended the service, including relatives of Eoghan Culligan, another victim of the balcony collapse, who was laid to rest in Dublin yesterday.
President Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Enda Kenny were represented by their aides de camp, the US Ambassador by his deputy chief of mission. Minister for Health Leo Varadkar represented the Government.
Parish priest Fr Joe Mullen said the deaths of the six students in Berkeley, California, had sent a “tidal wave of grief and loss across the Atlantic Ocean”. He added that the service was being streamed live on the internet, meaning the students still injured in hospital in California could watch.
Items brought to the altar included photo collages of Niccolai and his friends, sports jerseys and a globe to symbolise his love of travel. After he finished his degree, Niccolai had intended to travel to South America for six months, his father said.
Prayers of the faithful were said for the Schuster family, for the six students who died in California, for the injured students and for the emergency services who helped in Berkeley.
During the eulogies, Nicc’s father said the tragedy in Berkeley is likely to increase parents’ anxiety about letting their children go abroad on J-1 and other summer holidays. “Let your kids go,” he urged them. “Do not let this incident deter you.”
He said if Nicc had survived he would have been determined to go to South America. “And I would have been happy to let him go, more than happy,” he said. Nick’s mother Graziella echoed those comments when she said the easiest thing to give a child is roots, but the most difficult thing to give them is a set of wings.
Mr Schuster also addressed the investigators into the balcony collapse: “Leave no stone unturned in the investigation,” he said. “This cannot happen again.”
