Brett Bailey
Brett Bailey loved the action on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
The noise, the excitement and the quick thinking necessary to succeed appealed to him, and for three years in his early 20s, he worked hard at it.
It was his cousin’s husband, Bobby Coll, who convinced him to try brokering at EuroBrokers, a large trading firm on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower.
Bailey, 28, loved that work too, and loved working for Coll. The two worked together and played together, said Bailey’s mother, Judy Bailey.
“He was a happy-go-lucky sort,” his mother said. “And you knew if your back was to the wall, he would be there for you.”
She believes Bailey and Coll were together on Sept. 11 as the towers collapsed, killing them both.
At the time, Bailey was well into wedding plans, though the date was still nine months away. He and his fiance had just co-signed a lease on an apartment in Manhattan, a bit closer to his job than his family’s New Jersey home.
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Michael Arczynski
Michael Arczynski’s career took him across the world, from Canada to Australia and England.
It was about a year ago that the Aon Corp. executive was transferred to New York, where he ran the company’s risk-management division.
He liked the city, his wife Lori said, but he preferred to be in the great outdoors, skiing if at all possible.
“Skiing was his passion,” she said, though “he was torn between the mountains and the beach.”
In the past, he was able to spend time at each, living in Australia before moving to England in 1991. While in Europe, he and his family spent a good deal of time in the Alps, his wife said.
“We both preferred to be outside instead of inside,” she said.
After the first plane struck the World Trade Center, Arczynski, the father of seven with another on the way, made his way to the 78th floor of his tower, which hadn’t yet been hit.
Though he was instructed to go back upstairs, he knew better, his wife said. Based on later reports, she believes he was walking down the stairs with a number of others when the second plane crashed into his building.
Robert J. Fangman
Robert J. Fangman, 33, who moved from Delaware to Boston in January, was a flight attendant on United Airlines Flight 175, the second flight hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center.
Fangman, the youngest of seven children, grew up in Claymont, Del.
“He really found his calling when he joined the airline,” said his mother, Ruth.
Fangman’s sister, Debbie, said her brother enjoyed dancing, gourmet meals, fine wine, pinball, surfing the Internet and dyeing his close-cropped hair.
“He had a true heart,” said Debbie, who hosted a celebration of her brother’s life. “He touched a lot of lives.”
John Connolly Jr.
When it came to his lawn, John Connolly Jr., who went by Jack, was a perfectionist. He spent upward of 10 hours each weekend mowing, pruning and mulching his acre in Allenwood, N.J. Neighbors teased him to stop making them look bad, but lawn work was his way of kicking back after work.
“I think it was just relaxing for him being outside, away from the craziness of trading,” said his wife, Dawn.
During the week, Connolly, an international money trader with EuroBrokers, left his house at 3:30 a.m. and arrived at his office on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower in time to call colleagues in Tokyo and London.
His unusual hours meant that he was home in time to coach his children’s baseball and soccer teams. Come nightfall, daddy and his three children–Dineen, 11; John, 9; and Patrick, 6–raced to see who was tucked into bed first.
Mr. Connolly could make friends with anybody, his wife said. One year, the couple celebrated Oktoberfest in Germany. The friends they made that day sent them postcards for a year, in German, which they never understood.
Children felt comfortable around him despite his 6-foot stature. He had a big smile and blue eyes, crowned by more pepper than salt in his hair. He grew up in a tight-knit community on Staten Island and studied at local Wagner College.
He believed in paying last respects when friends and family members died, so his wife wanted to give him a proper burial: a casket filled with mementos of his life. His son wanted to include the lawn mower, but settled for burying his garden work boots.
Andy Alameno
Andy Alameno worked in the World Trade Center in the high-powered world of bond trading, yet he made it home by 6 p.m. every night to be with his family.
His wife would smile at the familiar sight of him carrying their tired 2-year-old daughter home from treks to find the ice cream man, pushing her doll stroller full of items she insisted on bringing. A family photo shows him patiently brushing her Barbie doll’s hair.
The Westfield, N.J., man made a tiny set of golf clubs for his 5-year-old son and started teaching him to play. Every Saturday morning, the pair watched Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
“He was just a complete and total family man,” said his wife Sally Cohen Alameno, who described him as a big kid.
“I had to constantly tell him not to wrestle on the floor so much with the children. I thought somebody was going to break their neck.”
The 37-year-old Cantor Fitzgerald bond trader never lost his boyishness, said his brother Carmen.
“He was very down-to-earth. He had no airs about him,” his wife said. “He just was who he was, and everyone loved him.”
Paul Ambrose
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Paul Ambrose, 32, of Washington, D.C., was a senior clinical adviser with the Office of the Surgeon General who worked toward improving health care for the poor.
He was on his way to Los Angeles for a conference on adolescent obesity when terrorists hijacked his flight, American Airlines Flight 77, and crashed it into the Pentagon.
Ambrose sought to curtail racial and ethnic disparities in health-care services. He volunteered at night and on weekends for an Arlington, Va., primary-care clinic for Central American refugees who did not speak English.
“He was trying to improve the way health care is delivered in this country, and he worked well in excess of 100 hours a week to do it,” said Adam Wooten, a friend and fellow graduate of Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, W.Va.
A native of Charleston, W.Va., Ambrose last year was named the Luther Terry Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine.
“This guy was spectacular,” said friend Erin Fuller. “He could’ve been surgeon general of this country.”
A week before the terrorist attacks, Ambrose became engaged to Bianco Angelico. They planned to marry in 2002 in Spain, where he spent a year studying at the Salamanca Medical School.
Pamela Boyce
Two weeks before the attacks, Pamela Boyce and her partner of 6 1/2 years, Catherine Anello, talked of the inevitable for no particular reason, unaware of how soon it would come.
“Her direct quote was, `Don’t mourn my death, celebrate my life,'” Anello said. “She’s been saying for years, `I’m not afraid to die because where I’m going is beautiful.'”
On Sept. 11, Boyce, 43, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was at work on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower when it was struck by a hijacked airliner.
While working full time as assistant vice president of accounting for financial services firm Carr Futures Inc., Boyce maintained a perfect 4.0 grade-point average at night school, and graduated in May with an associate’s degree in accounting from Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. “Once she put her mind to it, that was it,” Anello said. “I used to get tired watching her come home and study after a full day of work.”
Still, Ms. Boyce had plenty of energy left over for friends.
“During the summer, we were always at the beach. She loved to get a tan and relax,” Anello said.
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For more on the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, go to chicagotribune.com/victims.