Mason Mascato
Photo courtesy of GoFundMe
BY DAVID SCIBILIA, MANAGING EDITOR
On Saturday, St. Bonaventure University senior Mason Mascato passed away while waiting for a heart transplant at Columbia University Medical Center, according to a university alert.
Mason, who was an English major, was one semester from graduating.
His friends remembered him as a funny, genuine person who could always make situations feel better.
“There were times when it was maybe midnight or 1 a.m. and I had a really bad day and just needed to talk to someone,” said Jordan Mejia ‘23. “Mason would always be there for me, whether it was watching movies, hanging out at the Devereux Hall pavilion or talking until 2, 3, 4 a.m., Mason would always be there. That was a real friendship. It was a real connection.”
In fact, the pavilion was one of his favorite spots to hang out, said many of his friends.
“Mason loved the Dev pavilion,” said Delaney Chase, a senior journalism student and friend. “Like, he was obsessed with it. All hours of the day, all hours of the night. I remember us joking with him: ‘Mason, you cannot be out at the pavilion at like, three in the morning. That’s dangerous.’”
Mason had the ability to connect people and balance his relationships with many friends at once, said Chase.
“Mason was one of my friends with a car, and he was always willing to drive you around, even to do silly things, like go to Walmart,” said Chase. “But he was always willing to give up his time for his friends and make sure he kept up with all of his relationships.”
Others remembered his laugh.
“You couldn’t not hear it,” said Micky Carneiro, a senior. “He had quite the laugh — you could hear it from down the hall. He was a really kind and funny guy.”
Mason’s love of music helped him connect with many.
“One of my favorite memories with him is when Mason, our friend Jesus and I would have carpool karaoke sessions in my car,” said Sydney Layton, a senior inclusive childhood and early childhood education major. “We would blare the music and sing at the top of our lungs. One of our favorites was “From Now On” from The Greatest Showman, and any time it comes on, I always think of him.”
But Mason listened to more than show tunes.
“This is really silly and cringe, but Mason and I actually bonded over Machine Gun Kelly,” said Chase. “I got obsessed with MGK my senior year of high school and ended up going to two concerts. When I mentioned that to Mason and learned he liked MGK too, I was like: ‘Let me send you concert videos.’ So I sent him videos from the concert, and then I was like, ‘Do you want to hang out with us?’ He said yes. And we kind of just became friends because of that.”
Others remembered him as someone who was always there for others.
“Mason was one of the first people I ever met at Bonaventure,” said Jef Canova, a senior sports media major. “We talked about our shared courses freshman year and how neither of us knew what was going on in them. But even when we were talking like that, he would always smile and laugh. And when he did understand something that I didn’t, he would help me.”
But it’s the little things, the snippets of conversations and waving to one another across the campus, that Canova said he’ll miss.
“I remember I was walking toward the university ministry building and Mason was wearing the same Nirvana hoodie that I had,” said Canova. “So I stopped him, and I was like, ‘Dude, where did you get that?’ He was like, ‘I got it from Old Navy.’ And then we just talked about Old Navy. That’s the kind of guy Mason was. We genuinely were talking about and bonded over Old Navy.”
During his time at Bonaventure, Mason was a resident assistant on the second floor of Falconio Hall for two years and on the fourth floor of Shay Hall until he left on medical leave during the fall 2024 semester.
“Mason was such a good RA,” said Emily Piwko, his friend and a senior who worked with him for three years. “When you get a call as an RA, you don’t know what you’re going to walk into. But Mason had this ability to connect with his residents and talk them through things and calm them down when bad situations happened. You don’t always find people like that.”
Kurt Stitzel, a Residence Director — someone who oversees the RAs — noted Mason’s ability to connect with his residents.
“Mason was an incredible RA who genuinely cared for all students,” said Stitzel. “There is not one memory in particular that could encapsulate how special his presence was to those who were fortunate enough to know him. Mason’s compassion, sense of humor and commitment to include and support all around him are what made him so beloved by those who knew him, especially his fellow RAs.”
And his residents agreed.
“Mason was my RA during my freshman year in Falconio Hall, and he was such a great soul,” said Joseph Janik, a sophomore. “[I remember him] at our first floor meeting of the year and he was so nice and kind. He cared for everyone.”
Many of Mason’s friends said his ability to make light of bad situations was truly special.
“There was this one time back when we were both just starting as RAs and we were about to be done with our on-call shift which ended at 3 a.m.,” said Piwko. “We got a call at 2:57. I don’t really remember what it was about, but it wasn’t too bad — but we were standing there forever, for, like, 40 minutes. And then we had to fill out the report, which took another half hour. By the end of the night, we were just so tired and hysterical about it, because we were trying to get through the report. We got out at around 4:30. But Mason always made it fun — he would always find the humor in everything that could go wrong. And he loved it. I loved it.”
Amy Smerkar, Mason’s academic counselor in the Higher Education Opportunites Program, described him as determined and kind.
“Mason was always there to help and connect with younger students in the program and that’s always so great to see people who want to help one another,” Smerkar said. “But Mason was faced with a lot of adversity and he never let it stop him. I remember he often had car troubles; a flat tire, an engine problem — but he worked through them. He was always working.”
Mason had at or above a 3.0 GPA every semester at Bonaventure and was inducted into the Chi Alpha Epsilon National Honor Society.
But it was Mason’s innate curiosity and careful attention to detail that stood out to his professors.
“He was a great, close reader of literature,” said Kaplan Harris, chair of the department of English and Mason’s adviser. “I was actually just glancing back through the papers that he turned in and you could see him really wrestling with difficult writers who questioned the nature of time and the meaning of existence.”
But Mason’s humility is what struck Harris the most.
“He had this profound ability you don’t always see in students where he was able to admit when he didn’t know something,” said Harris. “He would write ‘I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but here’s my guess at it.’ And that humility and curiosity is rare.”
Others shared similar sentiments.
“To borrow a phrase from [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, ‘It is not the length of life, but the depth of life’ that defines a life well-lived. Mason lived deeply,” said Caitlin Smith, an assistant professor of early American literature. “In his careful attention to the various worlds of literature, his kindness and patience towards peers, his quiet curiosity about the wider world and his final gift to others as an organ donor, he experienced life deeply and fully.”
Some professors said Mason’s ability to turn his feelings into meaningful writing set him apart from other students.
“I think Mason had a really good sense for the authentic, and his poems really reflected that,” said Joseph Hall, a visiting assistant professor of English who taught Mason in a poetry-based creative writing class. “His poems seemed more like that classic kind of poem, in which the speaker grapples with mortality itself. But they were funny, dark, furious — his work was layered and rich.”
Matt King, an associate professor of English, mentioned that Mason’s creativity was essential to his work.
“Mason did some really interesting work with audio and visuals,” said King. “He worked on this project where he acted out two different versions of himself and recorded two different versions of himself lip-syncing the song ‘Therapy,’ by Bmike. The way he filmed it was really creative and really impactful — he did it completely in black and white and it was clear he was willing to take up some personal issues and convey them in a beautiful and interesting way.”
Faculty, staff and students are invited to the University Chapel in Doyle Hall at 7:30 p.m. today for a candlelight vigil to celebrate Mason’s life. For those unable to attend in person, the vigil will be live-streamed here. Those wishing to donate to Mason’s family can do so here.
Scibild22@bonaventure.edu
