Avis de décès de Arthur-R. Lavalle - Nécrologie - MesAieux.com

LOWELL -- Arthur Rudolf LaValle, a resident of Lowell, died Sunday, Sept. 17, at Emerson Hospital in Concord, after experiencing chest pains while cycling in Carlisle State Forest on Sunday afternoon. He had been living with heart disease for several years.He was born in Flushing, borough of Queens, in New York City, Nov. 27, 1945, the youngest child of Attilio and Florence Rudolfo LaValle. Attilo was a cabinet maker from Sicily, who emigrated to the United States as a young man in 1917. Florence was the daughter of an Atlantic City, N.J. Sicilian family, with older roots in the U.S. Her father helped to build the famous Steel Pier. He graduated from Canton High School in 1963 and briefly attended community college while working as a welder. He was hired by Honeywell, Inc. and trained as a software engineer through their in-house program.He met his wife, Dorna Caskie in 1980. They lived briefly in downtown Newburyport and then bought a house on Plum Island, where their son Peter was born in 1983. The family moved to Groveland, where daughter Jeanne "Niki" was born in 1985.Mr. LaValle and his wife separated in 1991, and he had lived in the Lowell area ever since.Mr. LaValle also worked for Wang Laboratories, Sequoia, and finally for Lotus, which was subsequently purchased by IBM. Most recently, he was an advisory software engineer, and worked on the Lotus Designer team.He loved the outdoors and endurance sports. He bicycled and cross-country skied competitively for many years and had many friends who also loved to bike and ski.Besides his children, he is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Joyce and Guido Cafasso; and the families of the Cafasso children Donna, Michelle, Guido, and Paul, all residing in Massachusetts.