Winthrop Junior Found Dead in Apparent Suicide

Anthony Fonseca ’04-’05 died in an apparent suicide in Winthrop House yesterday morning.

Fonseca, an economics concentrator from Lawton, Okla., known to friends as “Deuce,” was remembered on campus for his passion for filmmaking and his skills as a deejay.

Friends said yesterday they were shocked to hear of Fonseca’s sudden death. Although the official cause of death is still under investigation, Cambridge Police Department spokesperson Frank D. Pasquarello said that no foul play is suspected and that it appears that Fonseca took his own life.

Fonseca’s roommate, Jukay Hsu ’06, said he found Fonseca lying motionless on the ground around 9:30 a.m. yesterday morning. Hsu notified a neighbor, and the two then notified a resident tutor and called the police.

Hsu, a transfer student from Columbia, has moved to a different room in Winthrop. Fonseca’s roommate from the fall is studying abroad this semester.

Hsu said Fonseca seemed fine on Saturday night and was using his computer at around 3 a.m. Sunday morning, just before Hsu went to sleep.

Cambridge and Harvard Police Departments responded to the call from Winthrop yesterday morning, and Fonseca was pronounced dead at the scene, Pasquarello said.

Fonseca’s death is the second tragedy to hit Winthrop House in a little over a year. Marian H. Smith, Class of 2004, committed suicide in her Winthrop A-entry dorm in December 2002.

At least a dozen Harvard undergraduates and graduate students have committed suicide since 1990, although Harvard officials could not provide exact statistics yesterday.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 sent an e-mail to undergraduates yesterday afternoon informing them of Fonseca’s death.

“I extend my heartfelt sympathies to his Winthrop Housemates, friends, and classmates,” Gross wrote. “I know the entire Harvard community joins me in extending to his family our deepest sympathies.”

Approximately 150 students gathered yesterday at a House meeting to hear the news from Winthrop Masters Stephen Rosen and Mandana Sassanfar.

Counselors from Mental Health Services and the Bureau of Study Counsel were also on hand to comfort Winthrop residents.

College and Winthrop officials said they did not know whether Harvard will hold any memorial events for Fonseca.

Friends said they were shocked by the apparent suicide and said that Fonseca had not been acting unusually in the time preceding his death.

Thomas D. Odell ’04-’05, who lived in J-entryway with Fonseca, said Fonseca dropped by his room around midnight on Saturday to have a couple drinks and make casual conversation.

“I noticed nothing out of the ordinary at all,” Odell said. “I got the impression that he had things under control.”

Fonseca was active in Harvard-Radcliffe Television (HRTV), serving as vice president of the executive board and as a director of HRTV’s soap opera, “Ivory Tower.”

HRTV president Debra T. Mao ’05 said the news of Fonseca’s death came as “a shock.”

“None of us thought he was troubled,” Mao said. “In general, he wasn’t a depressed person.”

Friends described Fonseca as easygoing and friendly, and several remembered his witty, sarcastic sense of humor.

An apparent enthusiast for his home state, Fonseca listed Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Sooners among his interests on his entry at thefacebook.com.

According to the entry, which was taken off the site yesterday afternoon by site creator Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06, Fonseca liked hip-hop music and his favorite books were Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Mario Puzo’s Fool’s Die.

Odell, who also lived in the same first-year Grays entryway as Fonseca, said Fonseca was outgoing and often passed from table to table during meals in Winthrop dining hall to visit with different groups of friends.

Lisa H. Feigenbaum ’04, who went to several formals with Fonseca, described him as “not superficial, he was interesting to talk to.”

She added that “he was very self-confident in the way he talked about himself—you could even say, cocky.”

Feigenbaum recalled that after a Dunster House formal, her ID got taken at the door of an after-party at the Roxy, but Fonseca was able to bargain with the bouncer to get her into the club.

But Feigenbaum said that at times, Fonseca could also be reserved, particularly about personal issues.

“He held a lot of stuff back, he wasn’t very open about a lot of things,” she said. “He would selectively have short responses to certain types of questions, he was sort of evasive about certain questions. He would joke things off rather than giving you a straightforward answer.”

Fonseca returned to school this fall after taking the 2002-2003 academic year off, but several friends said they did not know why he left or what he did during his time off.

“[The year off] is definitely one of the mysteries of Anthony Fonseca,” Odell said. “A lot of us would ask him, and he wouldn’t say.”

Mao, who said Fonseca was deeply committed to the television station, described his personality as combining sarcasm with a more casual manner.

“He had a very prominent attitude. There’s just a way about him that was different,” Mao said. “He was laid back, [he] made fun of things. He was sarcastic and cynical but in a funny way.”

Mao, who said she would miss Fosneca’s “devil-may-care presence and good-natured dedication,” called him “a very talented filmmaker.”

“His work on the show last semester really conveyed his talent as a budding director and videographer,” she said.

Ivory Tower Executive Director Adam D. Fishbach ’06 wrote in an e-mail that Fonseca will be “greatly missed” at the television station.

“He possessed a great sense of humor, and he was a pleasure to know and work with,” Fishbach wrote.

The HRTV board is creating a DVD compilation of Fonseca’s work for the station as well as and student memories of him to give to his friends and family, Mao said.

“Although he always had an easygoing and nonchalant demeanor, we always knew we could count on him to come through on things,” Mao wrote in an e-mail.

She said that she was surprised that Fonseca missed HRTV’s weekly board meeting last Thursday. He wrote her a last-minute e-mail saying he couldn’t make it.

“It’s pretty abnormal for him not to come to meetings, that’s kind of odd,” Mao said.

Fonseca often deejayed campus parties and events, including the party following the Evening With Champions charity event.

He also recently completed the comp for WHRB’s black urban contemporary and studio engineering departments, although he eventually decided not to take on a show of his own.

“He was motivated and interested in what radio was,” said Scott L. Jones ’05, president of the WHRB, the campus radio station.

Fonseca spent intersession in Los Angeles, Calif., participating in the Harvardwood program, where he was able to observe filmmaking firsthand and meet people who worked in the movie business.

Mao said Fonseca recounted his Harvardwood experiences during the frequent shuttle rides they shared to and from the HRTV studio in Pforzheimer House.

“On our last trip, he told me all about all the professional connections he had made,” Mao wrote in an e-mail. “He had such ambition.”

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Katharine A. Kaplan can be reached at kkaplan@fas.harvard.edu.