The money was raised from the John A. DiNapoli Memorial Benefit Golf Tournament

On Tuesday, more than 100 family members, friends and colleagues of slain police officer John A. DiNapoli gathered across from the Appleton Street police headquarters to pay their respects to DiNapoli, who was shot dead in his police cruiser 10 years ago, and to two other city police officers killed in the line of duty.

DiNapoli's son and daughter, Andrew D. DiNapoli, a nine-year city police officer, and Jobeth DiNapoli, stood with Jamie B. Gonsor, daughter of late police officer James E. Gatzounas, stood beside the memorial as the Police Department's honor guard brought a wreath to the memorial. Gonsor is also John DiNapoli's goddaughter.

DiNapoli, well-known for his knack for telling jokes and his laughing way of interacting with children, was 52 and had been a police officer for 22 years when he answered a disturbance call on Dec. 22, 1999. Unarmed and in an unmarked police cruiser, DiNapoli encountered Eddie O. Morales, who shot a 9 mm gun at DiNapoli 10 times. DiNapoli was struck five times. Morales is serving a life sentence after a first-degree murder conviction.

"Today, I'm happy and sad," said officer Gary G. Wagner, one of DiNapoli's close friends and a member of the department's honor guard. "I'm sad I don't have my friend, but I'm happy to see his memory has not been lost."

For his closest family members, like his children, his mother, Myra DiNapoli, and his sister, June A. Sullivan, the memories of the day 10 years ago never go away. "What can I say? He was the best there was," said Myra DiNapoli, now 91. "You couldn't ask for a better son."

Sullivan was at the Holyoke Public Library, about a block away from the shooting, when her brother was killed. She remembers seeing the police helicopters and wondering what was going on as she returned to her job at a career center on High Street. She got the bad news shortly after when her husband Edwin J. "Snooky" Sullivan came to her office.

Because the shooting happened shortly before Christmas, it has cast a pall over the holidays for the entire family every year since, she said.

"We had his presents under the tree that he never opened," Sullivan said. Over the years she has given them to other people.

Sullivan said she and her mother and other family members usually get together on the anniversary of the shooting."It's a sad day for her," she said.

"It's hard on everybody, and it doesn't get any easier for my grandmother, even after 10 years," added Garrison J. Rivard, John DiNapoli's nephew and godson as well as a former police officer who was among the first responders to the shooting scene. "I served with John for 18 years; I was in the ambulance with him on the way to the hospital. I held him the whole way there."

Before the ceremony, Wagner presented the Rev. Robert A. Gentile, pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church, with a donation for Blessed Sacrament School. The money was raised from the John A. DiNapoli Memorial Benefit Golf Tournament.

The ceremony started 8:45 a.m. At 8:52 a.m., the exact time DiNapoli responded to a call for a disturbance at Sargeant and Walnut streets on Dec. 22, 1999, the police dispatcher put out a call for "Holyoke Police Department, all cars and units."

"We are having a moment of silence for fallen officers John P. Driscoll, James Gatzounas and John DiNapoli, who died in the line of duty this day in 1999," the dispatcher said, her voice carrying above the crowd encircling the memorial that shows DiNapoli with two small children.

Gatzounas died of a heart attack at age 28 after responding to a disturbance on Jan. 1, 1977. His then-wife, Beth Gonsor, was pregnant at the time. Gonsor and DiNapoli's ex-wife, Joanne Silvestris, are sisters.

Mayor Michael J. Sullivan, also a friend of John DiNapoli's, said he has a difficult time believing a decade has passed. His voice breaking, Sullivan offered his condolences to DiNapoli's family and friends.

"Like it says on the back of the monument, it's not how they died but how they lived their lives," Sullivan said.