There is a 37-year-old home recording of the voice of Katherine Wolf, as a 3-year-old girl in Wales, telling her "mummy and daddy" that she would "like to sing `All Things Bright and Beautiful.' "It was a promising start to a lifelong avocation. Mrs. Wolf became a classically trained pianist, and an accompanist for the Philbeach Society, an amateur operetta group in London. Her musicianship led her to America in 1988, when the ensemble staged a joint production with the Village Light Opera Group in Manhattan. Charles Wolf, a member of the opera group, recalled the night he met her that year and said to a colleague: "Who is that woman? I have got to get to know her." They were together ever since.
Mrs. Wolf worked for years at Schroders, a British asset management company in Midtown. And just three weeks before Sept. 11, she began a new job at Marsh & McLennan, on the 97th floor of 1 World Trade Center.
"You couldn't let her reserved exterior fool you — she'd stand up to anyone for something or someone who she believed in," said her friend Jean Orr.
Copyright (c) 2001 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission.
