THE LOST

By Roni Rabin | STAFF WRITER. Stacy Altherr; Jo Craven McGinty; Steve Zipay; Mary Voboril; Collin Nash

September 22, 2001

THEY ARE SO terribly young.

Of all the biographical details seeping out about the people missing from the World Trade Center, it is their collective youth that reaches up from the news pages and catches one by the throat, their youth that assaults one's sense of the natural order of things, demolishing any illusion that life is fair.

Older people are also missing, and the pain of their loved ones is no less searing. But financial services and firefighting are magnets for the young and vibrant. So many of the missing are 28 years old, or 33, or 39. Their tree of life, it seems, was just beginning to bear fruit.

Because they are young, they have young spouses - and young children. Babies in diapers, and babies just christened. Timothy Roy has three children; the youngest is 3, the oldest is 10.

Some of the missing have girlfriends, not wives. Others have fiancees and wedding plans. The children in John Tierney's life are nephews and a niece. He played guitar until he had blisters. He wanted to be the best.

They are people who should still have loads of time.

A Sergeant Who Ran

To Help Those in Need

Timothy Roy was on his way to traffic court when he got the news of the World Trade Center disaster and ran to help. He was last seen in Building 5 helping a burn victim. "That was him. The first one on any scene. Right in there," said his wife, Stacey.

Roy, 36, is a sergeant for the bus squad of the New York City Police Department. The lifelong Massapequa Park resident is a graduate of Berner High School in Massapequa. He and his wife have three children-Caitlyn, 10, Brittney, 7, and Timmy Jr., 3. Roy, a 16-year veteran of the police department, has eight siblings, including three brothers in the fire department and another brother who is a police officer. Among Roy's awards is a unit citation for his work during the Crown Heights riot in

1991.

-Stacy Altherr

'The Rev' Ministered

To His Co-Workers

Alfred Braca narrowly survived the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center only to perish last week when terrorists attacked the Twin Towers for the second time.

Braca, 54, of Leonardo, N.J., was a vice president for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of Tower One. His nickname was "The Rev," and in addition to serving as a deacon at Calvary Chapel Four Winds in Middletown, N.J., Jean Braca said, her husband spent many evenings ministering to colleagues.

"When people were down and out, or upset, or their marriage was on the rocks, or when they weren't making money, when things were really tough-and these were Wall Street types-they would secretly call him, and my husband would meet them and sit there and talk to them," Jean Braca said. "He always had to spread the Good News."

Jean Braca said her husband's deep faith has comforted her in the aftermath of his death.

"There's never been, 'God, why us?'" she said. "There's never been, 'I hate the people who've done this.' I've said, 'God, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'"

Braca is also survived by his parents, Betty and Fred Braca; his sister, Sharon Bruscella, 48; his children, David, 31, twins Deanna Wirth and Christina Cambeis, 27, and Christopher, 16; and three grandchildren.