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KENNETH JOHN CUBAS: In a Hero's Nature

 

Ken Cubas was not a fireman or a police officer, not one of the uniformed  men who stormed up the stairs of the World Trade Center while fleeing office workers streamed  down. Mr. Cubas, 48, was a vice president at Fiduciary Trust. Yet his wife's solace comes from hearing of her husband's bravery. In the hours after the towers crumbled, Kerry Flood Cubas got several telephone calls from Ken's colleagues, reporting that he had helped them reach safety from 2 World Trade. One caller, Mrs. Cubas said, saw him outside the building and begged him not to return. He ignored those pleas.

"I take tremendous consolation in knowing he died so nobly," she said from the couple's home in Woodstock, N.Y. "He had a  choice. He knew the risk he was taking and he wasn't deterred. His nature brought him to his death and I find beauty in that."

Ken and Kerry Cubas have been together for 25 years. Mr. Cubas was a Big Brother to Oscar Zapata, an inner-city youngster, whom he befriended when the boy was 11. They remained close after Mr. Zapata joined the Army. Mr. and Mrs. Cubas were also mentoring Oscar's sister, Marlene.

 "He died as he lived," Mrs. Cubas said, "helping others."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times