Nick Maggiore has passed away

Posted by Alex Reinhardt on April 17, 2011 · 25 Comments 

I’m afraid I have the unfortunate task to inform you all about the sudden death of Nicholas David Maggiore, yesterday afternoon, April 16, 2011. Nick was hospitalised a few days before the end of March due to a terrible illness he’s been suffering from since a long time and was subject to a medical treatment that unfortunately didn’t work. His mother has reported that yesterday he died due to bacterial meningitis.

Nick didn’t grow up in an easy environment: Italian origins, raised in New York, his parents divorced when he was 10, and he grew up with his mother outside the Big Apple. Until the moment in which his mother received a promotion, he felt the financial crisis and the bad sides of the American dream. However, when he was 14, things started to get better.

Nick joined St.Charlie on August 26, 2009, and applied for the St.Charlian Observer. He was the reporter of the Observergate, the Ambassadorial Council, the Grand Unified Micronational, he was the journalist of the young and growing MicroWiki Community, when Erusia was still the prominent, loved and feared, micronation, and when the St.Charlian Observer was competing against the Erusia Central News. When he became Director of the Observer, in November 2009, Nick turned a famous micronational paper into one of the best and most read  newspapers in the community and the micronational world. His writing stile was recognised as one of the best ones we had around at the time. Until the day he passed away, he was seen by many as a great journalist and micronationalist.

Speaking without knowing perfectly about his family situation is uncalled for. Therefore I won’t do it. I will just remember Nick, the man who used to lurk the internet, known with its name or as “Tzar Nick”.

Nick was a phobic guy, fastidious about his newspaper. When reading the drafts, he complained about every possible mistake. When we had to publish the edition on the General Elections, he was nervous and picky. Everything needed an explanation for him, whatever its importance, both in micro and micronational life. He just wanted things to be perfect for everyone. Last time I spoke to him was in the first days of March, it was night time for me, and he wanted to share a few thoughts. Nick always had those philosophical moments resulting from parties or dates with other guys, which I loved because they were always full of considerations about our existence. Once he told me that you can understand how much a person loves you by the way the hands you a cigarette. At first it seemed like a strange sentence, but then I understood what he meant.

I knew him pretty well. When we were both online on Facebook, we spoke about everything, our issues, micronationalim, our lives, our school, my intention to become a diplomat and his dream of attending the Carter Journalism Institute at the NYU. His real passion was Journalism: you could ask him about the Watergate scandal and he would have told you everything. That’s also another reason why he loved it when we called it the “Observergate”, or the “Eurogate”. When we spoke that day, the very last time I heard of him, he told me he was sick, but didn’t want to tell me what it was, and made me promise that I wouldn’t have told anyone, which I respected. His mother broke the silence days after his 18th birthday. Coincidentally, during the same time he was nominated for the Schneiders, but I was unable to say a word about his health.

Let’s try not to forget him. Let’s make sure that the places he liked, the websites he visited, the things he loved, the values he supported, aren’t forgotten.

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