DARREN BOHAN: Banjos and Big
Dreams
Like
so many New Yorkers, there was more to Darren Bohan than
met the eye. By day he was a temp and for the past few
months he worked on the 102nd floor of 2 World Trade
Center, where he crunched numbers for the Aon
Corporation. But Mr. Bohan would rather have been
plucking a banjo or strumming his guitar, jamming with
friends until late at night.
Alison Kelley, his girlfriend, said he hoped to parlay
his musical talents into a full-time job, perhaps as a
music teacher at a public school. "Music was so important
to him," she said.
Ms. Kelley, also a banjo player, spent many hours
playing with Mr. Bohan. Their repertory ran from Irish
ballads to songs by the rock band Kiss to 19th-century
American roots music. "We'd play just about anything,"
Ms. Kelley said. The two had been inseparable since
meeting at a music jam in Brooklyn seven months ago.
Laid back, gentle and unpretentious, Mr. Bohan, 34,
tried not to gripe too much about his day job, although
he was not thrilled to be working 102 stories off the
ground. "He didn't like being so unnaturally high up, in
a place where something terrible happened before," she
said. "But he'd just try to tell people it was a nice
view."
.