Marie Abad: Literary
Escapist
Marie
Abad loved her job as a senior vice president at Keefe
Bruyette & Woods, where she was one of the
highest-ranking women in the firm. But it was equally
important to her to find an escape from work, said her
husband, Rudy, and she found that through the hundreds of
books she went through each year.
Ms. Abad, 49, read on the train commuting from Long
Island to the World Trade Center, and she read on
vacation. Each October, she and her husband would spend
three weeks in Hawaii -- a tradition that started on
their honeymoon and continued over the next two decades
-- and every year she would make sure she had plenty to
read. Hawaii meant down time: days on end when the
biggest decision was where to have dinner, and the
passage of time was marked by the leisurely flutter of
turned pages -- novels, biographies, celebrity
tell-alls.
"She'd go through eight books in three weeks, and
these were not little books," Mr. Abad said. "I know
because I did the packing."
Ms. Abad, who was born and raised in Queens, did not
plan on a career in business. She studied sociology at
Queens College and dreamed of being a teacher. She and
her husband had plotted out the lives they would lead
when the workaday world could be left behind: six months
of the year traveling was their plan. And of course, a
world of books to explore.
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