2996: One Remembered Here

2,996 is a tribute to the victims of 9/11. On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers will join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11. Each person will pay tribute to a single victim. We will honor them by remembering their lives, and not by remembering their murderers.

James Matthew Patrick

Age 30

Place killed: World Trade Center

Resident of Norwalk, Connecticut

Patrick, a bond broker with Cantor Fitzgerald on the upper floors of One World Trade Center, was on the phone with a client when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 hit the building. The client, who was not identified, called the family to relay Patrick's final phone conversation.

"He apparently simply interrupted the client and said he had to leave because the building was being evacuated because a plane had hit,'' his father-in-law, Terry Buckmiller said.

Patrick's wife, Tera Lynn, a tutor at a middle school in Naugatuck, was expecting their first child, a boy, four weeks after the attacks.

"Oh he was so excited about this baby,'' Jacqueline Buckmiller said in between tears as she waited her daughter to return from a doctor's visit. "He and Tera Lynn had just celebrated their first anniversary last weekend. They had gone to Vermont to celebrate. How quickly life can change.''

James Patrick envisioned his future as filled with children - shouting, playing and bouncing around the house. "He really liked the noise, the chaos, the Sunday morning with everyone jumping in bed with you," said his wife, Terilyn. "I was bargaining for three kids. He didn't want to settle for any less than four."

But Mr. Patrick died seven weeks before his first child, Jack, came into the world. "We would talk about that stuff all the time," Mrs. Patrick said. "He really loved the thought of teaching them to play hockey and going to all their games, and in college, going up to their games and tailgating with them."

Mr. Patrick grew up with five siblings in a noisy Irish family, and he wanted to repeat the experience from a dad's point of view. In the spring of 2001, a few weeks after Tera learned she was pregnant, the couple moved from the Upper West Side to a condo in Norwalk, Conn. It was to be a brief stop on the way to a big house in Fairfield County. "They have great hockey there, for the kids," Ms. Patrick said.