NESTOR A. CINTRON III: Hooked on
Books
"I
just want books, Ma," Nestor A. Cintron III would
say.
Growing up in the Alfred E. Smith Houses in a tough
part of the Lower East Side, Mr. Cintron was the resident
intellectual. "My son didn't take any drugs; he had no
bad habits; his thing was reading," his mother, Alicia
Leguillow, recalled.
"For Christmas, I would get him $200 gift certificates
to Borders and he would buy books."
Mr. Cintron, 26, a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, read
anything, but preferred books that were other-worldly:
Carl Sagan, Michael Crichton and Robert Jordan were his
favorite writers. He was a huge "Star Wars" buff.
He got his two younger brothers hooked, too, to the
point where they would all sit at the dinner table
reading. "They were never raised by a father, so they had
each other," Mr. Cintron's mother said.
Ms. Leguillow knew her son was gifted from childhood,
when a teacher at Public School 1 insisted on skipping
him from the fourth to the sixth grade, because he was so
far ahead in math. But he was still one of the guys.
"He had so much intelligence, he didn't need to show
it," said his brother Fred Gonzalez Jr.
.
