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JOSEPH JOHN BERRY: Vacations With the Children

 

Joseph John Berry, a man who left big tips and who once urged a nervous friend to go through with her wedding because "marriage is a wonderful thing," simply hated the idea of a vacation without his three children. Never mind that they are all grown now, with the youngest 21 and the oldest 27. Whether it was a trip to Italy or one of their annual pilgrimages to Aruba for New Year's Eve, "our children came with us," Evelyn Berry said. "All three of them. All the time. Wherever we go, whatever vacation. To this day, if we're going away they're there with us."

"How many children do you know who spend every New Year's with their parents?"

To Mrs. Berry, who would have celebrated her 32nd wedding anniversary next month, this is the essential fact of her husband's life, not the honors he collected as one of the most influential Irish-Americans on Wall Street, or the professional status he enjoyed as chairman and co-chief executive of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, an investment banking firm, but the fact that he also coached just about every team his children ever played on, from soccer to basketball.

"If anything, we were more in love today than when we first got married," Mrs. Berry said.

Mr. Berry, 55, who worked on the 89th floor of 2 World Trade Center, died on his wife's 54th birthday.

"The fact that he's gone is the greatest pain," she said. "The day it happened is immaterial."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times