Aaron Nicholas Morrow's Obituary
It is with deeply sorrowed hearts that we inform you of the passing of Aaron Nicholas Morrow, age 31, this Sunday, the 18th of Jan 2015 at approx. 08:03PM. An unrelenting cancer has taken him away from us following more than three years of courageous fight. Aaron will be buried at Restland in Richardson, Texas in a private gravesite ceremony. Aaron entered this world on October 7, 1983 in Fridley, Minnesota. He was an amazing baby; he rarely cried, was able to stand on his own for a bit at 3 months and walked at 8 ¾ months. When he was 2 years old, he started a great adventure when the family moved to Rome, Italy where he would spend most of his childhood. There, while learning Italian and English at the same time, he attended the local Italian Montessori School and the Italian elementary in Casal Palocco, outside of Rome. He eventually attended Southlands English School. While at Southlands, he first exhibited a recurring gift for saving the lives of others. At just 9 years of age, he organized emergency services (while teachers and administrators were paralyzed with horror) in order to treat and save a 7-year old Kenyan boy who had been run over by a school bus while chasing a loose soccer ball. Later, as a pre-teen, Aaron would rescue a disabled boy whose kayak had over-turned in Lake Palestine near Tyler, Texas. During high school, having received a suspicious e-mail others discounted; he engaged the Garland police who, on investigating matters, cooperated with other authorities in heading off a likely shooting rampage at an Ontario, Canada school. The evening of his high school graduation, he performed the Heimlich maneuver on his own mother, who was truly choking – thus saving her life, too. Aaron was an avid gamer in his teens; he loved playing video games and assembling super-fast computers from parts in a box. Aaron was very athletic; while in Rome, he learned karate. As the highest level belt in his class, the instructor would have Aaron, then only 10, lead a class of predominantly adults in warm-up exercises. Owing to Aaron’s amazing condition and capabilities in karate, he was groomed to be an Italian karate champion and probably would have been had the family not moved to the United States. Aaron picked up on his athletic endeavors in the U.S. when he began weight training at 15, a sport he would continue for at least a dozen years. In the height of his career, he was fiercely strong and could bench press 425 pounds. Aaron was perhaps the happiest when he was traveling, seeing different places and being enriched by different cultures. He traveled back to Europe twice, enjoyed the Middle East extensively on two occasions and visited numerous locations in the United States. Aaron had an unusual gift for music. He developed an interest in keyboard instruments while living in Italy and continued studies in the U.S. At age 14, Aaron taught himself Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor and would eventually perform that piece with the Texas Ambassadors as they toured numerous countries in Europe. He would play that and other Bach pieces on organs at Westminster Abbey, Wesley Chapel and the church in Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg, Austria. Aaron pursued an education in business and achieved a Bachelor of Science in Business degree from the University of Texas at Dallas. During that time, he became fluent in his third language, Spanish, all the while a large and dangerous tumor was growing in his brain. He worked for Trinity Industries 2008-2009 and then for L-3 Communications in Greenville, Texas starting in 2009. He was proud of his work for L-3 and was pleased to support their noble missions for national defense. Sometimes he volunteered when management needed coverage to work overtime or weekend shifts despite being on chemo treatment at the same time. He was a supremely compassionate person, who never accepted the suffering of people around him whether by hunger, disease or poverty. Aaron would be so moved by the back-breaking work of low paid construction workers that he would pull over and hand out what money he had to them. He was also the first to run to the aid of any friend who found themselves in a difficult situation. Aaron expected little for all that he gave; he simply wanted to find a good hearted woman, get married, possibly have a couple of children, and live a quiet and normal life. He pursued the woman of his dreams with the resolution of an idealist, over-looking and forgiving all manners of behavior because he felt that everyone deserved a second chance. The cancer may have trampled on his simple dream of being a husband and father, but Aaron never backed down from his incurable disease and was not afraid of finishing the fight. Aaron passed from this life gently at home, nestled lovingly within the devoted attention of his parents, and amidst the company of his watchful companion animals. Aaron is survived by his parents, Domenico Piscioneri and Jana Nicholas, who knew him as the Prince of Casal Palocco, the Duke of Acilia, the Baron of Ostia Antica, the Marquise of Infernetto and the King of their hearts. The family extends its deep appreciation to Drs. Fink and Nestor and the numerous outstanding medical professionals at the Baylor Hospitals in Dallas and Garland for their compassionate and unrelenting dedication in taking on this vicious cancer and extending Aaron’s life as long as humanly possible. The family is grateful as well to Vitas Hospice for their excellent support in helping us to bring comfort and dignity to his transition from this life. While he presents his shimmering and innocent soul to the God Who made him, Aaron’s earthly presence will be laid to rest during a private graveyard service. In lieu of flowers or other expressions of sympathy, the family requests that those wishing to honor Aaron do so by acting with compassion toward other human beings, especially the downtrodden and poor, since that is as Aaron would have wanted. No one who is loved is ever lost, and Aaron was loved very, very much.
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