Andrew Louis Liotta ’10, an active member of the Trumbull College community and a staff photographer for the News, died at his San Francisco home last Friday, March 14. He was 21.
The cause of Liotta’s death is unknown. His mother, Rita Liotta, said he passed away in his sleep.
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In 2005, Liotta graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory, where he was the co-president of the school’s film club. As a coxswain on the school’s crew team, Liotta steered St. Ignatius to a third-place finish at the Junior National Championships in 2004 and a first-place finish in 2005.
Originally a member of the Yale College class of 2009, he deferred enrollment for a year after his freshman year. Liotta returned to Yale last summer, when he traveled to Italy with the Yale Summer Session.
Liotta, who turned 21 on March 7, was often noticed for his wry sense of humor, and his friends say he never failed to make light of difficult situations. “He’d get this great grin on his face,” Amy Koenig ’09 said.
But Liotta was also known for his involvement in the Trumbull community, which his mother said he “loved very much.”
Trumbull students frequently received e-mails and news updates from Liotta in his capacity as publicity manager for the Trumbull College Council.
At the News, where Liotta was a staff photographer, he was calm and collected. Try as they did, the editors of the News’ photography desk could not dig up embarrassing stories about Liotta from his suitemates to share at his staff induction ceremony last December.
At the last minute, photography editor Han Xu ’09 recounted, the editors told Liotta to perform a handstand on the Boardroom table at 202 York Street. Heartily, he obliged.
“He almost got it,” Xu said. “But we made him stop because we didn’t want him to fall.”
Ian Randolph ’10, who went to high school with Liotta, described him as “quiet yet strangely charismatic.”
“He had this energy about him,” Randolph added.
A visitation and rosary will be held on March 24 at 6 p.m. at the Church of St. Ignatius in San Francisco. The funeral will take place the following day, March 25, at 10 a.m.
In an e-mail to her students Wednesday, Trumbull College Master Janet Henrich said there will be a “gathering in Trumbull to remember and honor Andrew shortly after classes resume.”