Timothy D. Betterly: Behind Humor,
Compassion
Timothy
D. Betterly was a master of zany tricks, gag gifts and
crazy costumes that family members readily acknowledge
sometimes skirted the bounds of sound judgment.
Like the time Mr. Betterly, a bond trader at Cantor
Fitzgerald, hopped on the back of a garbage truck passing
by Madison Square Garden as he, his brother Donald and
his wife, Joanne, were about to head home to New Jersey
after watching a track meet. Mr. Betterly returned a
half-hour later in a cab. Once when his daughters,
Samantha, 12, and Christine, 9, had a sleepover party, he
took the pajama-clad group on a tour of such late-night
hot spots as the Little Silver, N.J., cemetery, the
all-night deli and the local jail, where he persuaded the
sergeant to lock up the giggling girls. The resulting
photograph was a keeper. But Mr. Betterly, 42, the
youngest of four brothers, had a sober side, too. In high
school, he invited a mentally handicapped girl who always
ate lunch alone to sit with his table of football
players. She did, every day for two years, and the girl's
mother later told Mr. Betterly's mother, Joan, that he
had "made her daughter's life."
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