Tom Licata was the kind of guy you could depend on, whether it was family or business matters.
He was always there. Rarely took a day off, never took vacations in 20 years of operating his own towing business, or through eight years of battling cancer, right up until the week before Christmas, when it took a combination of COVID and a heart attack to fell the Brooklyn-raised patriarch.
Licata’s daughter, Danielle Ruediger-Weber, still holds out hope that her family can persevere, but the absence of her father has left the family scrambling.
The strain of dealing with her father’s passing, and burial and family situation, has become not only emotional, but financial. Ruediger-Weber started a GoFundMe page in the midst of her father’s final health battle and has decided to maintain and update it.
“Our community has been great, so helpful since I first reached out through Facebook,” she told the Sun on Jan. 25. “Seeing how many have shared it and donated, it helps so much with practical things and our well-being, too. My father didn’t have life insurance, so we were grateful to have the funds to bury him.”
To date, 55 donors have raised more than $4,000, but it’s far short of the family’s $45,000 goal.
Licata passed away on Dec. 18, just 13 days after he took a rapid COVID test, and 10 days after a further test — the invasive nasal swab at the county’s site in Blackwood — confirmed he was positive. In typical fashion, Ruediger-Weber recalled, her father said he felt fine and settled into the impending two weeks of quarantine. But the family had reason to be concerned.
“He wanted to stick it out; the family wanted him to go to the hospital,” she revealed. “But he was stubborn. Even with chemotherapy in fighting cancer for the last eight years, he never missed a day of work.”
Licata finally acquiesced to a hospital visit early on the morning of Dec. 12, after he began to have trouble breathing. At his first stop, he developed rapid atrial fibrillation, and was transferred to Jefferson for more intensive care. Once there, it was advised Licata go on a ventilator, but he was typically resistant.
“But then, we didn’t hear from him for two days. And on the morning of the 18th, the hospital called and said a ventilator was necessary,” Ruediger-Weber continued. “My brother and sister-in-law were also quarantining, but had to come out because my mother was in such bad shape hearing about my father’s condition.”
The family knew Licata would fight for all he was worth, and believed he would beat the odds to come out of the hospital. But an unexpected complication arose in the form of a heart attack, and the double whammy was too much to overcome.
“We made peace with him being lost to cancer, because we thought we could have been with him,” Ruediger-Weber said, “but we can’t accept that he’s gone due to COVID and we couldn’t be there.”
Aside from funeral costs, she said her family did everything it could to salvage her father’s business, because Licata intended to pass it down to his children and grandchildren and keep the family afloat. Costs to maintain his truck and pay insurance proved too high, and now the family of seven has to keep their noses to the grindstone.
“My father’s business was our family’s main source of income,” Ruediger-Weber admitted. “Now we are a family of seven and trying to navigate our lives. My husband has to work three jobs now, and my brother is looking for another job, too.”
In an update to the fundraising page on Jan. 23, Ruediger-Weber said she’s looking to place a headstone on her father’s grave and offset the sudden loss of income from her father’s business. She admitted the hardest part about asking for help is having to do so in the first place, and it’s been more difficult having to extend their hands to friends, neighbors and well- wishers for so long.
“We’re old-school Italian, so (to make the situation public) goes against my family’s wishes, and if my dad were here, he’d hate it,” Ruediger-Weber acknowledged “But I had to do this to honor him and to say goodbye the proper way.”
To make a contribution, visit the GoFundMe at gofund.me/20e3b56c.
