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John DiFato: Always in Contact

 

John DiFato and Susan Giaccio fell in love at Macy's. She was working there when he walked in with a friend. She had known him vaguely from college. "He said something cute," she remembered. "I instantly fell in love with the cleft in his chin.

"We were each other's soul mates," she said. When Anthony, 10, Nicole, 9, and John, 3, were born, he called their births a miracle. Like many couples joined at the heart, husband and wife were in constant telephone contact all day. Mr. DiFato, 39, went to his job as a business security controller at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center early, and he always phoned so he could say goodbye to Anthony and Nicole before school.

And "during the day he would be beeping me -- like, where are you?" Mrs. DiFato said. Sometimes she would be running for an appointment and when she heard her beeper she would mutter, "O.K., now what?"

On Sept. 11, when she learned of the attack on the World Trade Center, she tried to beep Mr. DiFato. There was no answer.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times