- guardian.co.uk, Sunday September 16 2001 16.31 BST
Cigars and time for fun
Timothy G. Byrne was a classic, jet-setting investment banker, driving a black BMW that smelled like stogies the day after he bought it. 'I used to joke with him that he just didn't want to spend any time alone in his apartment,' said his brother, Sean Byrne, one of his nine siblings. A week last Friday, after finishing work at Sandler O'Neill selling bonds, Timothy Byrne, 36, left the office with a colleague in his BMW 'loaded with golf clubs and eight cigars,' Sean said. He played golf on Long Island, spent Saturday with another brother and his wife, and then met Sean for a Jets game on Sunday. 'He showed up, no matter how busy he was,' Sean said. 'Maybe not on time, but he was always there.'
Stanley McCaskill
Proud to be a mamma's boy
Stanley McCaskill was called a mama's boy in the housing projects on West 112th Street, where he had always lived. Everyone knew his 77-year-old mother, Ella Mae McCaskill, had a tight hold on him. But he did not mind being teased about it, and would call his mother every day from his job in the North Tower, where he was a guard for Advantage Security. Ella Mae told him to. She gave him a prayer cloth and a tiny red Bible for his wallet. Stanley's mother knew the size of his belt, his pants, his shirt, even the name of his barber. At 47, he had not moved out, even though his mother did not care for some of his girlfriends. 'He loved her,' said his cousin, Carolyn Louallen. 'He just didn't want to leave her.'
John G. Scharf
The big kid of the family
At a family reunion in Manorville, N.Y., this summer, John G. Scharf got sprayed in the face by a watergun-waving posse of young, giggling cousins. A former Marine Corps sergeant, John couldn't let them get away with that. 'It wasn't just retaliation, it was double retaliation,' said his sister-in- law, Kim Scharf. 'He wouldn't let the kids win.' At 29, John was the second oldest of five children, but he remained the 'big kid' of the family. A favourite tale is the one about how he tangoed with a squirrel while trying to place a birdhouse in a tree in the back yard. He dangled back and forth from a limb, with the squirrel on his face, before finally getting the birdhouse just right. The squirrel survived, too.
William Hunt
Protecting little brother
What Dan Hunt likes to tell about his brother William is that during Dan's senior year in high school, William, then at college, went to every basketball game he played. When Dan's team lost its final game, and Dan fell two free throws short of a milestone of 2,000 points, his brother was there to protect him. 'Some newspeople wanted to ask me how I felt,' Dan remembered. William kept them away, warning, 'Buddy, I really don't think it's a good idea right now.' Dan said of William, 32, who worked at Euro Brokers in the South Tower, 'He's very protective of everyone he loves.' That included his wife of three years, Jennifer, and their 15-month-old daughter, Emma, who William called Lovebird.
William Valcarcel
Fighting through to success
As ever, William Valcarcel was in his wheelchair on Tuesday, in his office on the 87th floor of the South Tower. 'He used crutches at home, but in the office it was always the chair,' said his daughter, Melissa, 22. 'Everything he did in his life was very hard.' William, 54, grew up speaking Spanish in Brooklyn, and was hospitalised with polio so severe that, for years, he was unable to go to school. That only delayed his learning English and did not stop him from swimming, or learning to drive, or from earning an accounting degree and a job with New York State at a time when few Puerto Ricans were being hired. 'He overcame everything,' his daughter said. 'He is a fighter. He always said to us, "Never give up".'
Lucy Fishman
Son was starting school
Tuesday was the first day of school for Lucy Fishman's three-year-old son, Jason. She may have stayed at her office because she wanted to hear from her husband, Gene Springer, how it had gone: if Jason had cried, if he went willingly. But when Gene called Lucy, 36, an executive secretary at Aon Research, in her 105th floor office, he got only her voice mail. This summer they had built a pool in their back yard in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, for the kids - Jason and his sister Samantha, 11. Gene agreed to talk to a reporter about Lucy, but began to weep and was unable to speak. 'A week before this we went to the Bronx Zoo with the kids,' said her sister Mary. 'That night, me and my sister went dancing.'
Gary J. Frank
Loved pool and the sea
Though Gary J. Frank programmed computers for a living, he was not the nerdy type. He had a dolphin and a starfish tattooed on his left shoulder because he loved to hang out on the Jersey shore. And Gary, 35, knew his way around smoke-filled pool halls, taking down more than a few seasoned sharks and winning trophies in amateur tournaments from Baltimore to Las Vegas. His sister, Laurie Vigeant, said that he rarely talked at the pool table: 'It's like watching the professionals,' she said. A divorced father, he always devoted every other weekend to his 12-year-old daughter, Jessica. This would have been their weekend.
Michael Richards
Giving life to bronze
Sculptor Michael Richards was probably doing the thing he loved most on Tuesday morning in his 92nd floor studio in the North Tower. 'He would work through most of the night and into the morning,' said Kira Harris, a friend. Michael, 38, born in Kingston, Jamaica, worked a lot in bonded bronze; his sculptures often had the look of life-size human figures. Christine Y. Kim, assistant curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, said his creations dealt with 'technology such as aviation, ironically.' Curator Jorge Daniel Veneciano said: 'Each of his works engages the notion of flight in at least two important senses: as a form of flight away from what is repressive, and as a form of flight toward what is redeeming.'
Rochelle M. Snell
Secret fan of wrestling
Rochelle M. Snell was a woman of passionate interests. She had this thing for Japanese films and rented stacks of foreign movies every week. She also loved everything Scottish and Irish. And she had a secret passion: wrestling. She had snared tickets to a couple of matches at Madison Square Garden, and planned to go with her sister, Shala d'Aquilar. Shala remembers a sweet-natured kid sister, nearly twice her size, who loved to squeeze her tight. Rochelle was an admin assistant and a whizz on computers at Regus, an office-leasing company in the South Tower. She shared a house with her sister and mother in Mount Vernon, N.Y, where rose bushes and marigolds brighten the front yard.
Joseph D. Mistrulli
Building and bonding
As a union carpenter, Joseph D. Mistrulli was good at putting things together, and he made a career of putting together some of the best-known places in New York City: the Russian Tea Room, Madame Tussaud's, Niketown, Windows on the World. But his life's work was not a building at all: it was his family. 'He worked all the time, not for himself, for us,' said his son, Joseph Jr. 'I can't tell you the last time he did something for himself.' The elder Mistrulli, 47, was adding a second floor to the ranch house in Wantagh, N.Y., that he shared with his wife, Philomena, and their three children. He had finished the children's bedrooms but, typically, left his and his wife's for last.
Mario Nardone
Nothing too good for mom
Mario Nardone called his mother on Tuesday morning to say he had found just the doctor for her. Linda Nardone has serious knee problems, and her son, a 32-year-old bonds broker, had done a little research. 'He said he found a doctor who took care of the Pope and the doctor doesn't take insurance, but it doesn't matter,' his mother said. Mario worked at Euro Brokers in the South Tower, but planned to quit in seven years so he could give something back to humanity. Single and the oldest of three children, he split his time between his Upper East Side apartment and his parents' home on Staten Island. When Mrs. Nardone's husband fell gravely ill with cancer, he wrote a cheque for his mother every month. 'There was nothing he didn't think of,' she says.
Helen Cross Kittle
Just starting a family
Helen Cross Kittle was the one to ask her future husband out on their first date. A good thing too, says Kevin Kittle, a high school custodian, because if she had waited for him to ask, he would 'still be single'. The Kittles lived in Larchmont and their love story was a knew-each-other-from-childhood kind of thing. Kevin was 'just dumb' - he didn't pick up on Helen's feelings until she told him she was looking for a nice guy and had always thought he was a nice guy. They married on 7 April, honeymooned in St. Lucia, and did not want to wait to start a family. Helen, 34, a computer specialist on the 103rd floor of the North Tower, was five months pregnant. She had an amniocentesis test nine days ago and had expected the results tomorrow.
Barbara Walsh
Cooking was her pleasure
The glue that held the family together; that's how relatives talk about Barbara Walsh. Her son-in-law, Paul Landstrom, said Barbara, 59, an admin assistant at Marsh & McClennan, had invited everyone over to the house in Staten Island on Tuesday to discuss a family vacation. Making dinner for everyone was no chore - she loved to cook. Paul said he once mentioned, casually, that he liked a green bean casserole Barbara made. 'Well, there wasn't a Thanksgiving for the next 10 years that there wasn't string-bean casserole on the table.' Once, when daughter Jennifer was young, Barbara fell through the ice of a local pond, trying to get her daughter off it. There'd been no real danger, the family remember, but any risk to a child was too much for Barbara.
Josh Rosenthal
Gifts for his beloved nieces
Last Sunday night, Josh Rosenthal went out for dinner with his sister, Helen, and her family to celebrate the coming of fall and the fact they were all together again after being apart over the summer. A portfolio manager at Fiduciary Trust, Josh most liked 'to play with his nieces,' Helen said. 'He would tease them mercilessly, just like he would tease me when I was a little girl.' He would also bring them gifts from his many travels, like a stamp with their names in Japanese or Chinese robes. Helen said she and Josh had been especially close since a two-month trip together through south east Asia about 15 years ago . 'He wasn't teasing me anymore,' she said.
