It's that day again

Six years later, it is easy to make offhanded jokes about Sept. 11., and you can count me among the guilty in that regard. It was a terrible, terrible day followed by yet more terrible days, and I find the only way to cope with such sheer awfulness is to try to find some levity. Anyway, I am going to try and go against my nature for a moment in order to remember someone who was lost that day.

Shortly before Sept. 11, John Willett, my dad's friend and a classmate in the MBA program they'd both recently graduated, took a job with Cantor Fitzgerald (a company that would lose 658 of its employees in the attacks). I heard lots of stories about John from my dad, but only met him once, when the two picked me up at the airport. I remember joining with my dad in teasing him about a fellow classmate he had a crush on. She was cute, he was smitten and he had been convinced to do her work for her. Ah, boys. It's hard to believe I'm the same age he was when he died. Anyway, this is what my dad wrote about him in the days following:

John was a good guy, a hard worker, had brilliant business sense. He was funny and reveled in his bizarre - and sometimes bad - tastes. Most importantly, he remained idealistic to the core. He lost a job and career in politics because he decided to blow the whistle on corruption in Missouri. He lost many weeks and weekends when he could have been studying or putting a new career together because he continuously had to return to Missouri and testify against the bad guys.

It’s a shame to lose him.