John Patrick Gallagher: Making
Sense of Life
The
Friday before the World Trade Center attack, John Patrick
Gallagher, an electricity trader at Cantor Fitzgerald,
played hooky from work so he could treat his wife,
Francine, and 2- month-old son, James Jordan, to a day at
the Bronx Zoo.
"He was so proud of his big boy," recalled Mrs.
Gallagher. Later that evening, at dinner with his brother
and friends, he told them about the jaunt. "Isn't that
what dads are supposed to do with their families on a
beautiful September day?" he asked.
Mr. Gallagher, 31, stood 6 feet 3 inches tall and
weighed around 270 pounds, but he had an extraordinary
grace about him, his wife said. He never took anything
for granted, perhaps because he lost his mother when he
was 1 and his father six years later. He was born in the
Bronx but he and his wife loved to travel. In 1999, Mr.
Gallagher asked his future wife to marry him on a trip to
Ireland. "He made my life make sense," Mrs. Gallagher
said. "It's hard to make sense of things now that he's
gone."
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