Mystery: Deadly Lessons

TOM VIVACQUA HAS been coaching wrestling at North for more than 20 years. At 46, he still has the bull shoulders and boxy-legged waddle of a guy who could throw an opponent to the ground and pin him. He’s a health teacher by trade, but more of a coach than an academic. He grew up in Levittown, a fact he’s proud of, maybe because it makes him tougher than a Council Rock guy, proof that the school district’s privileged pedigree hasn’t rubbed off. Students gravitate to him because he appears to be accessible, on their level in a way. Coach V can be trusted, they think. Coach V knows us. He’s the little Italian guy with the big laugh and the huge smile, who probably knows a lot of dirty jokes, who likely shotguns beers at the faculty party. When he wears his navy Council Rock sweatshirt with the frayed neck, his sweatpants and skullcap, you get the sense it’s the wardrobe he’s most comfortable in.

He says nothing in the world compares to going head-to-head on the mat, when it’s just you and your opponent. “Wrestling lets you know you’re alive,” he tells me, letting the last part of “alive” echo a little longer.

He’s coached wrestling for more than half his life. Coached a lot of kids — quirky kids, good kids, determined kids, bad kids, troubled kids. But before 2003, none of those kids were dying. Or trying to.

In five years, Vivacqua’s seen four of his wrestlers try to commit suicide. Two succeeded, two didn’t. On one occasion, in the spring of 2005, he arrived at St. Mary’s Hospital in Langhorne in the early morning to see a boy in the emergency room. He remembers leaning over this boy — this six-foot, square-jawed, brush-cut boy, a popular kid — now with tubes attached everywhere, his eyes closed. He grabbed the boy’s hand, and the boy squeezed back — hard. He survived.

Last March, Vivacqua got another call in the early morning hours. On the other end of his cell was a Northampton police dispatcher, a former wrestler who knew Coach V. The guy told him that Scott Glover, one of the boys on his team — another boy on his team — had just been rushed to St. Mary’s after attempting suicide.

Vivacqua popped out of bed, jumped into his car, his mind racing, his heart breaking, still too early to think “Not again,” but it was there, nonetheless, in his brain. He threaded his way through the emergency room and came upon Scotty’s friends, huddled, crying. Vivacqua walked into the boy’s hospital room, and something seemed familiar. Then it hit him: It was the same room as the boy two years before. Now it was Scotty, who wrestled at 152 pounds, a kid he’d known for years, one of his leaders, with the tubes in him, eyes closed.

Tammy Glover was leaning over the bed, red-eyed and scared, waiting for her son to wake up. Vivacqua went to approach the bedside. Big Scott sized him up and erupted:

“What the hell is going on, Tom? What the hell is going on?!”

Tom Vivacqua didn’t have an answer for that. Nobody does.

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