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SCOTT HAZELCORN: Dream of an Ice Cream Truck

 

At a memorial service for Scott Hazelcorn, his father learned that there were at least a dozen people who considered his son their best friend. This was not the result of duplicity, Charles Hazelcorn said, but rather a function of Scott's open heart and sunny nature. Each eulogist put it differently: your problem was his problem; he made each person feel he was the only one in the room; he taught people to hug each other; he was the one who made work fun.

"Nobody enjoyed life more, from the minute he got up to the minute he went to sleep," his father said. And to that end there were "Haz's Rules," which included setting the clock radio to a Spanish language station, which he could not understand, so he never had to start the day listening to bad news.

The younger Mr. Hazelcorn, 29, was a trader of long-term treasury bonds at Cantor Fitzgerald; his girlfriend, Amy Callahan, was a special-education teacher. The pair had plans for a summer camp for needy kids. Scott often told his parents that he wanted to buy an ice cream truck, so he could hear the squeals of children all day.

When Cantor Fitzgerald spun off a company called eSpeed, which allowed clients to do their own trading, Mr. Hazelcorn's work group shrank from 30 to 4. In a few months, it was to disappear altogether, his father said. To his son that was good news: between yearly raises, bonuses and stock options in eSpeed, he was planning to buy that ice cream truck.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times