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GERTRUDE ALAGERO: The Luckiest in the World

She always had time for a friendly chat with the corner newsdealer and the counterman at the deli, and she was sometimes forgetful about paying parking tickets and bills. But Gertrude Alagero, nicknamed Trudi, was also a determined competitor. After she taught her fiancé, Peter B. Walther, to snowboard, she never let him beat her when they raced down Okemo Mountain in Vermont.

Ms. Alagero, a senior vice president at Marsh Private Client Services, a division of Marsh & McLennan, and Mr. Walther, who was her supervisor before they began dating in 1998, had planned to marry in Boston on Jan. 5.

A few days before the terrorist attack, Mr. Walther said, she pressed her fingers to his mouth while they were walking toward the subway from their Upper West Side apartment.

"Shhh," she said, "I need to tell you something: I am the luckiest woman in the world."

On Sept. 7, the day that Ms. Alagero turned 37, she gave Mr. Walther a Nikon camera so he could become adept at using it before their honeymoon in Africa. He snapped two rolls of pictures, mostly of her. 

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times