Daniel Carbone

Daniel Carbone, of Arlington, VA went to be with God on Tuesday, March 13, 2018. He was 67 years old. Born in 1950, at the beginning of the baby boom, he was raised during the innocent days of the 1950’s, when optimism reined and he, like the other children in his family’s Bellevue Forest neighborhood, ranged the open spaces behind houses, playing football and capture the flag until late into the dusk and it was time to wander home and be told that his mother had “almost” called the police. He attended James Madison Elementary school, Williamsburg Junior High, and Yorktown High school. Daniel was 13 when, in November 1963, the long, dark cultural upheaval began. He still played, though, now on the guitar, learning old ragtime songs and immersing himself in the Beatles and other raucous tunes of the new soundscape. In 1968, he left Arlington to attend Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, where he majored in biology but began to sour on the leftism that permeated the college scene in those days. He had the good sense to leave school and begin what would be a lifelong search for that which is real and eternal. He worked for a few years as a Montessori teacher on Martha’s Vineyard before moving to New York City, where he lived in the safest neighborhood in Greenwich Village, patrolled by the many Hells Angels gang members that lived across the street. In New York, he practiced and taught Homeopathy and Nutrition for seven years. All the while, he continued a spiritual quest that had begun shortly after he left Swarthmore and, from 1972 until the time of his death, he practiced a form of spiritual meditation known as Surat Shabd Yoga (meditation on the inner light and sound of God) and was part of an international organization, known in the United States as Science of Spirituality, that is dedicated to personal transformation through meditation. In 1988, Daniel met Brigid Simpson at a New York City gathering of SOS. He married her a year later and the couple returned to Arlington. Daniel’s only child, Nicholas, was born in October 1989, and he remained a devoted father for the rest of his life. He raised Nicholas alone after his divorce from Brigid and centered his life around his parenting until Nick entered young adulthood, after which they continued to be very close. Daniel’s main career, of 35 years, was that of a woodworker and cabinet maker. For years he operated Sunrise Construction Company, but the wear and tear of construction work and a chance affiliation with a huckster friend who talked him into starting a guitar repair business, before abandoning him, conspired to provide him with his final vocation. He spent the last years of his life combining his carpentry skills and his love of guitars by operating the Arlington Fretworks repair shop. As a luthier, he not only offered expert repair but also made a variety of custom electric guitars fashioned from apple, cocobolo, holly, and other exotic woods. “To me,” he once wrote, “guitars are beautiful, even the funky cheap ones, and getting one to play well is a pleasure.” He made helpful instructional videos, and recordings of some of his professional clients playing his custom instruments remain on his website. At the time of his death, he had universal 5-star reviews online and many comments, one of which called him “a guitar whisperer,” and many others that praised him for his affability, honesty, skill, and knowledge. Almost everything he did was done with passion and attention to detail, from roasting and brewing his own coffee to throwing himself into golf as he got older. He was ardently pro-life and was vegetarian from his young adulthood, never eating anything, he once said, “that ever had any eyes.” In his final years, he explored his Italian heritage by gardening in the back yard, growing a wide variety of tomatoes that would be the subject of endless taste tests, and becoming expert in the ways of figs and nursing back to health the fig tree planted by his Nono Mario 60 years before. The laughter and enthusiasm of children was one of the great joys of his life, and he had a flock of grand-nieces and nephews in recent years that often surrounded him, to his delight. He will be deeply missed by them and by many others, including his mother, Lynn Carbone, also of Arlington, his sister, Elisa Carbone and her husband, Jim Casbarian, of Silver Springs, MD, his brother and sister-in-law, Greg and Diane Carbone, of North Yarmouth, ME, and his nieces and nephews, Daniel Nugent and wife, Janelle Cronk of Martinez, CA, Rachel Nugent and husband Mark Miskolczi of Westfield, NJ, Kingsley Weaver and husband Andrew Kephart of Chicago, IL, Genevieve and husband Patrick Obrien of Worcester, MA, Emilia Carbone and husband Jedediah Beach of Lincolnville, ME, Natalia and husband Matthew Fulton of Cumberland, ME, and the flock: Eloise and Marlena Fulton, Ray, Silas, and Luca Beach, Haylie, Jacob and Ander Obrien, Alex Miskolczi, Emma Nugent, and Everett Kephart. Family, friends, and neighbors are invited for a vigil gathering from 5 – 8 p.m. on the evening of April 4, 2018 at the Carbone family home at 3306 North Peary Street in Arlington. Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. on Thursday, April 5 at Murphy Funeral Home, 4510 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington followed by a reception at the Carbone family home on 3306 North Peary Street.