Trade Center victims: Mostly men, mostly young, many with children


Associated Press

Matthew McDermott had two toddlers and was about to become a father again. Lou Fersini brought his wife flowers and a kiss on Sept. 10, their last night together. And Mike Finnegan's eyes filled with tears on a home video as he sent his daughter off to her first day of kindergarten with a hug.

In many ways, all three men were typical of the World Trade Center victims, as an Associated Press analysis of nearly 3,000 of the missing and dead found.

Three-quarters of the victims were men. The average age of those killed was 40. Most were in their 30s and 40s, prime parenting age. Some were new parents; others, like Deanna Galante, who was eight months pregnant, were expecting children.

A total of 230 were vice presidents at major financial institutions. At least 130 victims were brokers of one sort or another. Three hundred forty-three of the missing and dead were firefighters.

"Since Sept. 11, you are either at work or you're at a funeral," said Tom Jensen, a New York deputy fire chief. Similarly, at the brokerage Sandler O'Neill, survivors have taped schedules of memorial services to an office wall just to keep track of the rites.

There were also salesmen, housekeepers, engineers and janitors, as well as dozens of cooks, military accountants, electricians, secretaries and travel agents.

Eight children died. The youngest was 2-year-old Christine Hanson of Groton, Mass., who was on her first trip to Disneyland. She was killed along with her parents on one of the airplanes hijacked out of Boston.

Forty-one were over 65. The oldest was retiree Robert Norton, 82, of Lubec, Maine, who was aboard one the airliners with his wife, Jackie Norton, on their way to a wedding in Santa Barbara.

Almost 800 cities and towns, scattered across 43 states and the District of Columbia, lost people in the attacks. Victims came from Guyana, Australia and at least 14 other countries.

Two-thirds lived in New York and New Jersey. The toll was highest in New York City, home to 929 victims, followed by four New Jersey suburbs along the bus and rail lines into the city: Hoboken (36), Jersey City (32), Middletown (21) and the smaller suburb of Basking Ridge (18).

"It's just too much," said Judy Slutzky, principal of a Basking Ridge school whose students lost fathers, coaches, uncles and friends.

Basking Ridge was where McDermott, Fersini and Finnegan lived. All three worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, a brokerage firm that lost an astonishing 670 employees.

Cantor was not alone in double- and triple-digit casualty totals. Marsh & McLennan lost 295; Aon, 176. Windows on the World, a restaurant with commanding views of the whole metropolitan area and beyond, lost 71, many of them immigrants working their way up the economic ladder.

Although the numbers remain frustratingly inexact, authorities say the death toll stands at somewhere around 4,700.

Those on the AP list were identified via information provided by the Defense Department, medical examiners, the courts, AP foreign bureaus, companies, families, newspapers, funeral homes and places of worship.



