PAUL BENEDETTI: Always Able to
Laugh
No
matter what calamity befell Paul Benedetti in this life,
his response was inevitable: a joke. Thus, when he
escaped the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center,
fighting smoke as he made a harrowing trek down the
stairs, "he never made much of it, except as an occasion
for a funny story," said his wife, Alessandra. The joke
involved a very large lady ahead of him, walking down the
stairs incredibly slowly, blocking the way.
Then there were all those voices from "The Simpsons,"
which he loved to imitate. Not to mention the office
software he rigged so Homer Simpson's distress word --
"doh" -- popped up electronically whenever users made a
mistake.
Actually Mr. Benedetti, 32, was a serious man, but
made his wit "into a management tool" at Aon Corporation,
where he was an assistant director of the
client-relationship- services department. "I know that if
he'd been trapped somewhere, he'd have been joking
around, whatever the situation," his wife said. "Trying
to break the tension."
.