Alex Ciccone was a very big fan of the New York Mets. His wife, Stephanie, who he met on a blind date in the late 1980"s, came from a family that loved the Yankees. "That was a problem," she said. "We had a lot of fun with that." Mr. Ciccone, 38, was a vice president at Marsh Inc., the insurance brokerage subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies. With a staff of eight, he was a rising star. "I had a conversation with one of my bosses about a month before Sept. 11," said Bruce Pepchinsky, who was Mr. Ciccone"s boss for four years. "The strong indication was that Alex would be promoted to senior vice president. He was a great problem solver, an executive who treated his staff as students as opposed to a big bad boss."
When he was not putting in 12- or 13-hour days at work, Mr. Ciccone loved to hang out in his yard in New Rochelle, N.Y., with his son, Stephen, 6, and his daughter, Julia, 5.
He was also a big Bruce Springsteen fan. But Annette Casarella, his sister, associates her brother with another recording artist. "He wore out a 45 record of `Lean on Me," by Bill Withers," she said. "When we were little I can remember his playing it over and over and over. Last summer, before this happened, we talked about how much he loved that song."
Copyright (c) 2001 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission.
