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Colleen Deloughery: 'She Was Not Shy'

 

Colleen Deloughery's tiny backyard in Bayonne, N.J., was the center of the galaxy. A pool took up most of it, leaving barely enough space for a table and chairs. But no matter how many friends and relatives showed up on weekends -- dozens, scores, nobody kept count -- they squeezed in somehow: kids splashing, adults yakking, beer flowing, luscious barbeque aromas swirling.

"There was always room for people," Patricia Marrese said of her sister's universe. "I called it the magic yard."

Open, spontaneous, generous, Mrs. Deloughery, 41, laughed a lot, and said "I love you" too much. Perhaps that's why everyone needed her so terribly -- not just her husband, Jay, and her "shadows," Amanda, 8, and Michael, 5, or her sister and five brothers, but the menagerie of nieces, nephews and cousins, and the circus of friends and co-workers at Aon (99th floor, 2 World Trade Center).

Strangers too. Jeanette Krupinski, a friend, recalled how Ms. Deloughery had stopped one day to talk to a homeless teenage mother living with her baby on the margins of a commuter station. "After that, she started bringing things to the woman &emdash; a stroller, a carrier, clothes, food, milk,"

Ms. Krupinski said. "She was not shy. She did wonderful things."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times