'Protecting, loving and serving': Naperville friends killed at Astroworld concert mourned, celebrated
The lives of two inseparable friends from Naperville were celebrated as their deaths together at a concert tragedy Nov. 5 were mourned during funeral Masses Saturday.
College students Franco Patino and Jacob "Jake" Jurinek, who attended the same grade, middle and high schools, died with eight others as a crowd surged toward rapper Travis Scott at the Astroworld music festival in Houston.
At a service for Patino, at Holy Spirit Catholic Community Church in Naperville, the Rev. John Sponder highlighted the 21-year-old's love for his family, "his great friendship with Jacob, his favorite saint, St. John Paul II, ... and his great devotion to super heroes Superman and Batman.
"Why would we want to mention this today? I know that, not so much that they were very important to both Franco and Jacob - but for what they stood for," Sponder added. "Fighting crime, defending others, protecting, loving, and serving."
After graduating from Neuqua Valley High School, where he and Jurinek played on the football team, Patino studied at the University of Dayton in Ohio, majoring in mechanical engineering. A number of his fraternity brothers from Alpha Psi Lambda attended Saturday's Mass.
Jurinek was a journalism student at Southern Illinois University. His funeral Mass was held Saturday morning, the day he would have turned 21, at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Darien.
"One thing that I always admired about Jacob was his people skills," Jurinek's girlfriend Emma Braning said at a Nov. 8 campus memorial, according to a story in The Daily Egyptian. "He made friends everywhere he went ... along with that, I never heard him say anything negative about anyone. I guarantee you, if you had smiled or waved in his direction, I had probably heard about it," she said.
The two young men also suffered through adversity. Jurinek's mother died in 2011 and Patino's mother has difficulty walking because of a medical condition.
Patino's brother, Julio Patino Jr., told the Daily Herald the two "were so close to each other. They were like brothers," he said. "Even at the very end, they were together."
Sponder recalled Patino's parents showing him one of the last photos of their son taken at the concert.
"It was one of those animated pictures where Franco was enjoying the crowd ... the singing and the laughing, and he turned his face to look at the one taking his picture. And as he turned his face, you could see it very clearly - it was the best and biggest smile," Sponder said.
"It was a moment worth praying about and thinking about. What does it mean? There he was enjoying the company of his best friend, enjoying the music and laughter ... somehow, perhaps knowing that whatever was about to happen - he need not be afraid. Somehow, perhaps with that smile he saw something that we did not. Perhaps, a way of saying to all of us, 'don't worry, everything will be OK.'"
• Daily Herald reporters Steve Zalusky and Katlyn Smith contributed to this report.