John B. Cahill: Good Humor in 3
Languages
When
John B. Cahill was an undergraduate at Boston College, he
was a real good-time guy, and his friends nicknamed him
Mad Dog. But he calmed down and matured into a gregarious
family man with a quirky sense of humor.
Mr. Cahill, 56, lived with his wife, Sharon, and two
sons, Brett, 17, and Sean, 15, in Wellesley, Mass., and
worked as a vice president of the systems group at Xerox.
But he planned to retire at the end of the year to start
his own consulting business. The name of it was MDI. His
family knew what the initials stood for: Mad Dog
Industries.
On Sept. 11, he was on Flight 175 to Los Angeles,
where he was going to visit a friend and do some work on
the new business. He had a passion for travel; the family
had lived in England and Brazil. He was fond of Latin
America, and planned to make it a focus of MDI. "He loved
the people," Mrs. Cahill said. "They work to live instead
of living to work."
Mr. Cahill spoke Spanish and Portuguese, and his
interest in languages was picked up by his children.
Brett is taking three languages &emdash; French, Spanish
and German. "He got that from John," Mrs. Cahill said,
"who realized the world was smaller than it seems."
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