On Monday, September 11, 2996 blogs will be paying tribute to the 2996 victims of 9-11. This is a tribute to William Fallon, a husband and the father of two daughters who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald as a trading system support manager. On 9-11, Cantor Fitzgerald was the hardest hit of any other company:

Cantor Fitzgerald’s former New York office, on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 658 employees, or about two-thirds of its workforce, in the September 11, 2001 attacks, considerably more than any other company, including the Fire Department of New York.

William Fallon was loved by his daughters Kayla and Kathleen. Kayla left the following message in 2005 on her daddy’s memorial page:

Daddy I love you and miss you beyond words I love you
love always,
kayla

They were proud of him and that he worked in the Twin Towers:

Whenever William Fallon and his family were near any vantage point where the Twin Towers were visible in the Manhattan skyline, his two young daughters would gleefully point and exclaim, “There’s where Daddy works.”
“Bill took the kids to the building several times. They were so proud of their daddy,” said Laura Fallon, wife of the 38-year-old executive who worked on the 103rd floor of Tower One. Fallon, known to everyone as Bill, was an assistant vice president and technical support manager for eSpeed, the electronic trading platform of brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald. The family lives in Coram.

And according to Laura, his wife, he was a devoted father:

“He went to work early so he could come home early to be with us,” she said. “He was the kind of daddy who liked taking the girls to dance classes.”

Who took his family on extended family vacations and had just returned from a trip to the Grand Teton, Mount Rushmore and Rocky Mountain National Park:

When Kayla turned 6 in 1999, William and Laura Fallon decided it was all right to start taking long trips. The resulting trip to the Grand Canyon was Kayla’s first long airplane ride and the first of a series of trips to national parks for the Fallons.
This year, they went on a sweeping 16-day trip that encompassed Grand Teton, Mount Rushmore, Rocky Mountain National Park, “and everyplace in between,” Mrs. Fallon said. She and her husband had mapped the trip using an atlas to pick a principal destination, then figured out what other parks were nearby. They got back on Labor Day weekend, and Mr. Fallon returned to work at Cantor Fitzgerald.

He was also a devoted employee:

“He was the guy people would call when they had trouble with the computer system,” his wife said. She explained that he was a dedicated executive who enjoyed his job and would often work from his home computer.
“He would get calls from all over the world. When the phone rang at 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday night, it might be Tokyo. He would log on and see what was wrong,” she said.

Who had a masters in computer science:

Fallon grew up in Ridge and earned his undergraduate degree from Polytechnic University in Farmingdale. He went on the obtain his master’s degree in computer science from the New York Institute of Technology.

And he is remembered by his colleagues for his humor:

I worked with Bill at Retuers for 4 years. He was always good for a dry joke or a quick smile. I am so sad for his family
You were a good friend at Reuters Bill. I will always miss the frequent visits to my cube and the constant jokes and quips. I enjoyed catching up to you on the train to NYC occasionally as well. You always found the humor in most depressing things. I will miss you.

He was married to his high school sweetheart, Laura:

The couple, who met at Longwood High School in Middle Island and were married for 17 years, have two daughters, Kathleen, 11, and Kayla, 8.

She remembers his assurance on Sept. 11 that he was OK and that they were being evacuated:

His wife, who said she and her husband called each other several times each day, noted that on Sept. 11 he telephoned her at about 8:55 a.m. “‘I’m OK, we’re evacuating,'” was what he immediately said, Laura recalled. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. He told me to put on the news and hung up.” That was the last time she spoke to him.

My prayers go out to William Fallon’s wife and her daughters. I can only imagine the pain that they must be experiencing at his loss, even after five years.
Here is a link to the other tributes. I also posted a tribute to another Cantor Fitzgerald employee here.